


To the Victorious

by Cryptographic_Delurk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dog Whisperer Fenris (Dragon Age), F/M, Gen, Graphic Violence, Grey Wardens, M/M, Multi, Origins & Awakening Rewrite, Slow Burn, Trans Fenris (Dragon Age), Vignettes, Warden Fenris (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 24,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25873507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk
Summary: When Fenris ran from Tevinter, he never expected to make it as far south as Ferelden. He never expected to drink from a goblet filled with darkspawn blood. He never expected to lead a motley crew against the Archdemon of the Fifth Blight, or anything that happened after.But then again, in leaving Danarius he had expected very little. And there was nowhere to go but onward and up.
Relationships: Alistair & Fenris (Dragon Age), Fenris & Sten (Dragon Age), Fenris & Wynne (Dragon Age)
Comments: 117
Kudos: 29





	1. Denerim: Interrogation Room

They’d sheered Fenris’s hair so close to his skull that the razor more than once dug a bloody gash into his scalp. He was self conscious about the rest – the bound hands, the black eye, the split lip leaking drool, the usual sheer white of his lyrium brands. But to his concussed mind, his raw bared scalp was the worst. Nothing to hide his eyes, and nothing to hide his pointed ears either.

The human man they brought him out to sit in front of was strange. Shining yellow-gold armour, and loose leggings, a gruff face, and skin nearly as dark as Fenris’s. So far as Fenris could tell, his heraldry did not match those of the Denerim City Guard.

“I see they were not kind to you,” the man said. “I apologise I could not convince the Guard to allow me an audience sooner.”

Fenris eyed him wearily, through his exhaustion. He had nothing to say.

“They say you slaughtered your way through a crew’s worth of hardened seamen,” the man continued. “I saw part of it from the inn’s landing myself. At one point it was twelve against one, and somehow you are still here.”

“They were going to redirect the vessel,” Fenris spat. “They targeted their passengers carefully, those with either no one to miss them or no recourse to take. Once out on the open sea, they were going straight to the Imperium. They were slavers.” Though of all the things Fenris was angry about, he was most angry for having allowed himself to be drawn into such a struggle. Foolishness and tripe, after everyone he’d cut through to make it here to Ferelden. There was no reason for him not to have kept walking when he passed them on the docks.

“I can see this means a great deal to you,” the man said sympathetically.

“Does it not to you?” Fenris demanded. “I had thought this a country above such evils,” he said, although he did so falsely. Southerners could be as self righteous and corrupt as any in the Imperium.

“It is not beneath my concern,” the man replied. “But I admit I am more interested in your talent as a swordsman… You know there is no proof of your claims.”

“They spoke Tevene,” Fenris said, which was as good as agreement. “I speak Tevene. I know what I heard. And what they were planning.”

“But the fact remains you have no proof of it. If any amount of proof could prevent the detention of an elf who has proven himself both capable and willing to cut his way through a dozen humans.”

“You are here to execute me,” Fenris stated, unwilling to play this game any longer.

“No,” Duncan stated, just as plainly. “I am here to recruit you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Things you should expect from this fic:** Fenris as the Hero of Ferelden. Lots of Alistair and Wynne and Sten. Fenris having an embarrassing mutually-unrequited crush on Alistair that goes nowhere. Trans Fenris (although this will be incidental rather than thematic to the story). Eventual Fenris/Isabela, Fenris/Justice, Fenris/Anders. Slowburn Mage Rights or Mage Fights sentiment.
> 
>  **Things you should not expect:** Much Morrigan or Zevran. (They are my top favourites in Origins and you have no idea how bummed out I am that Fenris isn’t playing nice with them). Fenris making all the ‘correct’ choices in Origins. Major Character Death – Alistair and Fenris are both making it out of Origins just fine. Much canon divergence for the contents of Origins. (Awakening will deviate a bit more. I’m only covering a tiny bit of DAII but by then the canon plot will probably be mangled beyond recognition.)
> 
> I've got the first few vignettes completed and am attempting weekly updates at this juncture. We'll see how that goes.


	2. Desolate Highway

They were three weeks out of Denerim when Fenris finally deigned to crack a joke. The wolf traps set in the field had been surprisingly ineffective at catching any of the wolves that had ambushed them. But there was one wolf they had caught at least, Fenris joked as he pried the metal clamp off his leg.

This necessitated explaining the meaning of his name. It was generally understood that if you had to explain a joke, it was not very funny.

Duncan laughed anyhow.

He had not left Denerim feeling altogether warm on Duncan. But the road to Ostagar was long, and Fenris knew he was impressionable. That was why he had run, why he needed to stay as far away from Danarius as possible. Because if he was near Danarius he’d let himself doubt and waver and be convinced that everything that happened was okay, and would be okay, when it was not.

_So you take a man on route to the chopping block, and say you’ll save him if he pledges to fight in your army, for a country that is not his._

_The Grey Wardens fight for all countries, and are under the authority of no nation. The Blight is something that affects us all,_ Duncan had said.

_It’s still not much of a choice. In fact, it doesn’t sound so different from the way some sell themselves into slavery in Tevinter._

_The Grey Wardens have never professed to be a charitable organisation_ , Duncan had replied. _But the fact remains that I need powerful and elite warriors to combat the coming Blight. And the fact remains there was no way for either of us to reverse your sentence save your conscription. As a Grey Warden you will be allowed to own property, hold titles, even marry and have a family, should you choose. And you will have the protection of all those in the order at your back, against the hunters you say are after you._ Duncan paused, and then spoke again. _I will not hold your anger against you, but I suggest we both venture to make the best of things._

Fenris chose to make the best of things.

Duncan didn’t seem to have much taste for needless cruelty. He did not keep Fenris shackled, forbid him food or supplies, or chastise his sullenness. When Fenris had explained the need for his custom lyrium-lined armour, for the use of his phasing abilities, Duncan had petitioned the Denerim Guard for it, and handed it over without further question.

And he was straightforward, polite, almost regal. It was hard to hate a man like that, even as they wronged you.

It was also hard to hate a man that was so clearly out of place himself.

“You are not Ferelden,” Fenris stated one day, just before they were about to retire for the night.

“I am,” Duncan assured. “I was born in Highever.”

“You are not quite that pale,” Fenris objected.

“My mother was from Rivain. And my father – Tevinter. But I spent most of my youth in Orlais.” Duncan appeared to ponder. “I suppose I am from everywhere. Perhaps that’s why being a Grey Warden suits me – it is a cause that unites all places.”

Fenris honed in on the most important part of this statement. “Your father was not a mage.” He had been given no reason to think Duncan of magical heritage – the man himself fought with double blades and not spells – but it was not impossible.

“He was not,” Duncan agreed neutrally.

Fenris relaxed.

The next morning, over a bowl of slimy oats, it felt fitting to tell a joke about the slop Fereldens thought passed for breakfast.


	3. The Ruins of Ostagar

Ostagar was not what Fenris had hoped. It turned out to be the remains of what was once the Southernmost stronghold of the Imperium. Even here surrounded by swamp, the legacy of the Magisters was alive and palpable.

Moreso for the corrupted seats of power that seemed to litter the camp. There was the Chantry, Circle Mages left to wander free, and the most embarrassing show pony of a ruler Fenris had ever seen, which said a lot given some of Danarius’s colleagues in Tevinter. Contrast the elvhen messenger boy everyone was barking orders at.

Fenris pointedly ignored the shouts of a caged prisoner and the steady, lifeless drone of a robed man, obviously a mage. And made his way to where an Alistair of the Grey Wardens was last seen.

This Alistair turned out to be something of a fool. They were surrounded by mages, and a dangerously large number of them, and Alistair seemed to take pleasure in riling them up for sport.

As much as Fenris would have been loathe to admit it aloud, he found himself silently agreeing with the mage that Alistair was arguing with – the glib comments  _did_ do him no credit. They made him seem smaller, more easily intimidated, rather than larger. And this was reinforced as Alistair fell into step behind Fenris as they circled the camp for the rest of the Warden Recruits.

Fenris continued to be unimpressed as he was spoke with more would-be members of their order. Particularly when Ser Jory opened his mouth and said:

“I wasn’t aware that elves could join the Grey Wardens. Those camped in the valley are all human.”

“What is it you mean to imply?” Fenris said neutrally.

“Nothing,” Jory said. “Just that in some places elves are not permitted in the military.”

“Nearly half of Tevinter’s military force is comprised of elves,” Fenris informed him. “Magisters are required to make donations of their slaves to the state. We are the foot soldiers to fuel their wars.”

“Then there is no reason to doubt you earned your place on your own merits. Even if I didn’t know Duncan’s not a man easily impressed.” Jory blazed through the implications of the conversation with practised ease of a man comfortable in his ignorance.

Fenris did not think it worth telling him that he had not been a foot soldier given to the state to be used as fodder. He’d been a personal bodyguard, cherished and coveted and far more dangerous.

“I worked hard to catch Duncan’s eye, myself,” Jory continued. “I was Champion of the Spring tourney in Highever.”

It was clear they had nothing in common.

Fenris was about to write the whole camp off, when he was flagged down by a man in front of a putrid smelling area he’d been informed was not a refuse pit, but rather the dog kennels.

“I know next to nothing about dogs,” Fenris demurred.

“It’s not so much what you know as what you are, really,” the kennel master assured.

Fenris’s curiosity was piqued. He’d heard stories about how the Mabari, a Tevinter-born breed, defected during the Ferelden invasions near the end of the fifth century TE. It had always tickled him that the hounds had preferred barbarians to mage lords.

“Dogs and I don’t get along,” Alistair protested. “If you’re so eager, go right ahead. Just leave me out of it.”

Fenris had.

The dog, clearly in pain, cowered in back of the pen as Fenris approached.

“Yes, I think we’ve all felt that way sometimes,” Fenris soothed. “Backed into a corner, afraid, ready to lash out at everything.”

But the dog’s ears perked up, though. And clearly he was an intelligent thing, because he let Fenris kneel in the mud beside him. And, for all his fear, he held his teeth when Fenris placed the muzzle over his jaw.

The dog whimpered, and leaned his head down gently into Fenris’s hand, which scratched softly at his ear.

This creature was something warm and breathing, and docile, against all odds. The dog’s tongue darted out between the clamped shut mouth, and licked at Fenris’s knee through the leggings, even as he let out little keening whines from the pain.

Fenris was not sure anyone had ever needed him like this, or ever would again. So he turned back to the kennel master and asked, “What else can I do?”


	4. The Korcari Wilds

The Wilds were a cold bog filled with wolves and the much-discussed darkspawn and little else. Fenris wasn’t quite enjoying the mud between his toes. Or the company.

“Those things are uglier than a hairy crone after I’ve bent her knees over tits,” Daveth laughed to chase away the fear. “How are you so calm?”

Fenris wasn’t feeling very calm at all in fact, but he shrugged. “They are not so different than demons and abominations.” Fenris was not very calm around those, either. But it was important that the enemy not sense this in you.

“And you’ve fought lots of those, I’m sure,” Daveth ribbed.

“More than I’d care to ever see again.”

Fenris let his eyes scan the surroundings. There was an overpass impromptuly turned to gallows. Ruins still scatted amongst the bog. No sign yet of a white flower with a red centre. There was a distinctive mark carved into the side of a mossy stone though – a trail sign – and Fenris narrowed his eyes at it and walked forward for a closer look.

Daveth, not seeming to take the hint, followed.

Ser Jory and Alistair lingered behind. They had bandaged the wounded soldier to the best of their ability, and now seemed to be involved in passive aggressive banter about who should lead this expedition into the Wilds. Jory being of the opinion that Alistair should do it, being a senior member of the Wardens, and Alistair being of the opinion that anybody but him should do it.

“Funny that no one realises you’ve taken over doing the honours,” Daveth smirked at Fenris. And when Fenris stared at him blankly, Daveth clarified. “I mean, I’m following you, aren’t I? We all are.”

Fenris snorted his disbelief. An absurd notion. He had simply fallen into the accustomed formation for search parties – himself in front, sword at the ready, a shield for those more important at the rear. It meant nothing.

Only perhaps it did mean something. Fenris was the one to lead them to higher ground and away from areas they might easily be ambushed. He kept his eyes open for more darkspawn, and the wild flower the Mabari needed, and further trail signs. When he directed the others around a horde, they followed. It was… disconcerting.

“So what’s up with your tattoos, Ser Elf?” Daveth persisted. “They get all glowy when you fight. You’re like a blur.”

“Yes, I imagine I must look strange to you,” Fenris allowed, speaking loud enough so the whole of the party might hear, and not bother him with it again. “It’s lyrium, carved into my skin.”

“But lyrium’s poisonous,” Alistair said. “And addictive.”

“Well, if it makes someone fight like that it’s no wonder the Chantry tries to keep everyone away from the stuff,” Daveth laughed.

“It is no wonder Duncan selected you,” Jory agreed. “They make you an excellent fighter.”

“But how did you get those marks?” Alistair persisted. “You didn’t get them on purpose, did you?”

“Let us speak of this some other time,” Fenris said curtly. “When we’re not liable to be ambushed around the next bend in the road.”

_If he started thinking about the marks, he’d think about how much they hurt. And he would go into battle hurting. But they hurt. They hurt all the time. But to others he simply appeared stronger and more fearsome for them._

They stumbled into a shade risen from ashes and the middle of a darkspawn-occupied Chasind camp before they finally came across what must have been the Warden outpost at one time. Alistair looked over his shoulder, as he dug through the cache, only to find nothing.

At once the witch was upon them. “Are you a vulture, I wonder?” Although she was more a vulture than any of them, circling like a predator toying with its prey. “Or merely an intruder, come into these Wilds of mine in search of easy prey? You disturb ashes none have touched for so long. Why is that?”

Daveth and Jory and Alistair drew into closer formation behind Fenris, which only made them an easier target if the witch decided to attack. “Don’t answer her, she looks Chasind,” Alistair warned. As Daveth squealed, “She’s a Witch of the Wilds! She’ll turn us into toads, she will!”

It was becoming quite clear that none in Fenris party had much experience handling mages. They were on unfamiliar ground, at the behest of a witch with unknown powers who, so far as Fenris could tell, had not approached on foot. But malevolent and dangerous as she might be, she had clearly not yet made up her mind about what to do with them.

“You there,” she jutted her head at Fenris. “Tell me your name and I shall tell you mine. Let us be civilised.”

Fenris gave his name. It was barely his to give to begin with.

“And you may call me Morrigan, if you wish.”

Fenris did not wish.

“Shall I guess your purpose here?” Morrigan asked. “You sought something in that chest, something that is here no longer?”

This produced more banter back and forth between Alistiar and her. Something Fenris had little appreciation for.

“What we are here for no longer remains,” Fenris pointed out. “The witch merely toys with us. We should take our leave.” If she chose at this point to attack, their course of action would be clear at least.

“Why so petulant?” Morrigan shot back. “I do not meet many people here, besides the Chasind Wilders. Are you all so mistrustful?”

Alistair sighed, he turned to Fenris as if to level with him. “We really _should_ get those treaties…”

The situation seemed to have de-escalated into some uneasy truce, and that was how Fenris found himself on course following behind the witch as she led them straight to her lair, as they presumably sought out her mother. Fenris could not decide if leading the rest of his party was more or less strange than following a mage holding vanguard through hostile territory.

Whatever could be said of this mage, she was true to her word. She introduced them to her mother, who lived in a hovel and wore tatty clothes and too much rouge. Fenris had met many mages driven mad by the power of demons, and he was not sure any of them had been so crazy and incomprehensible as this.

He told her as much.

“Is that all?” Flemeth only laughed. “So much about you is uncertain. You’ve come far, and cast aside your collar, but you’re not truly free. Yet I believe… Do I?” She tilted her head as if to listen for an answer on the wind. “Why, it seems I do.”

Against his expectations, Fenris swallowed her critique and her belief both. “You see a great deal.” Perhaps he even meant it as praise.

Flemeth laughed again and offered him the treaties, and Fenris saw no reason not to take them.


	5. The Joining

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small content warning for medical abuse and possible body horror. And head’s up that this story does _not_ include forced masculinisation. It’s a facet of Danarius’s abuse that he offers his victims favours that coincide with violations in order to make them feel complicit in what has caused them pain and undermine their confidence in their ability to make decisions for themselves. Fenris just doesn’t have the clearest picture of that at the moment.

“It is finished. Welcome.”

Duncan and Alistair were peering down at him.

_This isn’t the first time this had happened,_ Fenris thought. The mages had prepared the brew, and it altered his body, and made him stronger and better and more useful. It was the same.

At least this time he had a choice. Danarius would not have let him die. He’d have had Fenris thralled and held down and tilted the anaesthesia into his mouth anyhow.

Jory knew what he was getting into. Fenris reminded himself not to waste time on pity. His wife and child did not deserve this, but every soldier knew the price of desertion. Even when your commander held a cup of corruption to your mouth and told you to drink.

“I’m glad at least one of you made it through.” Alistair pulled him to his feet, and clasped a warm amulet into his hand. He lingered a little, like Fenris was a lifeline. “We take some of that blood and put it in a pendant. Something to remind us of those that didn’t make it this far.”

Fenris said nothing. He still felt wobbly. Everyone was still talking at him.

“Did you have nightmares?” Alistair asked. The question trailed off into a little anxious laugh. “You’re so stoic. You seem completely unflappable. Does nothing scare you?”

Being afraid of everything and being afraid of nothing were really the same thing, Fenris thought.

“It is easier the second time,” Fenris said.

Alistair grimaced and let it lie.

Fenris considered the pendant. He already had his brands, and he didn’t need to carry more remembrances of how they had altered him.  _At least this time he’d had a choice._ Although he’d always carried more doubts about that than he could afford to let on. Danarius had cut the fat out of his chest and replaced it with lyrium. He was always in pain because of it. There should have been no room for Fenris’s ambivalence.

Fenris hooked the pendant around his neck and tucked it under his shirt.

He was a soldier, and they’d made him to be one. He knew what was expected of him. It was the easiest thing to fall back on this moment. He stood behind Duncan and “Yes, your Majesty. Thank you, your Majesty.” You accepted the tasks that were given to you without complaint, and though he agreed with the mage that ran up to tell them the tower and its beacon were unnecessary, he felt vindicated when the Reverend Mother shot the man down just as quickly.

Alistair seemed to have a harder time accepting his position than Fenris did.

“So King Cailan needs two Grey Wardens standing up there holding the torch,” he ribbed. “Just in case, right?”

Duncan seemed weary but firm. “If King Cailan wishes Grey Wardens to ensure the beacon is lit, then Grey Wardens will be there… We must do whatever it takes to destroy the darkspawn, exciting or no.”

“I get it. I get it,” Alistair sighed. “But, just so you know, if the king ever asks me to put on a dress and dance the Remigold, I'm drawing the line.”

Fenris snorted involuntarily. When everyone looked to him he shrugged. “It might make a good distraction.” The idea of Alistair leaping about in a brightly coloured harvest dress was certainly doing wonders to distract him from the rest of the evening’s concerns.

“Me shimmying down the darkspawn line?” Alistair snickered, and attempted the best shimmy he could in full plate. “Sure, we could kill them while they roll around laughing.”

Duncan sighed wearily.

Fenris couldn’t hold back another laugh. Alistair’s cheeks looked a very lush red brown in the firelight. And Fenris felt his own cheeks heat and –  _oh no_ . He quickly covered the laugh with a cough and turned to face the business at hand.


	6. The Tower of Ishal

“You there,” Fenris said in his most commanding tone.

The guard pursed his lips, and the mage seemed surprised to be addressed directly.

“Me, sir?”

“You mages were planning another way of signalling the troops in the valley,” Fenris said. “Is that still an option?”

“I, uh, don’t know anything about that, sir,” the mage said, wide-eyed and lost.

“If the tower is breached, it may be best to hold the line outside of it,” Fenris reasoned. “It cannot be that difficult for you to send up a beacon.”

“By myself?” the mage squeaked. “I wouldn’t know how.”

“Are you that much a fool?” Fenris snapped, irritated. “We’re flanked by darkspawn and you’re intent on playing dumb?!”

_Such a task would surely be child’s play for any mage._

It was growing wet and cold, now that night had descended on Ostagar. And the only warmth was that of the flames and explosives being catapulted at them by the advancing horde. It was no time for games.

The mage hung his head, and glanced anxiously at the tower guard, as if looking for a second opinion.

Alistair was the one that interrupted. “I am… not sure that’s the best idea. Even if we could gather enough Circle Mages to reinstate that plan, the Teryn will be expecting the beacon atop the tower. It’s a little late to be changing things up now… We can get to the beacon and light it ourselves if we have to.”

His voice was hesitant, but nobody disagreed.

Fenris studied him. Alistair was solemn and determined, rather than eager and gleeful for the chance to do more than act a torch bearer. Good.

Fenris curled his toes in the cold mud. “Fine,” he snipped, and brushed forward towards the tower. The others fell in line behind him.

“The darkspawn came up through the lower chambers,” the guard explained as they made their way to the entrance of the tower.

“Perhaps we can find a way to blockade their point of entry,” Fenris said lamely. Although it seemed a paltry hope. Even if they discovered the route by which the darkspawn invaded the tower, how was a team of four meant to be tasked with holding them back and lighting the beacon simultaneously? In all likelihood, it was a one way ticket up that tower.

Fenris was a soldier. He would do it.

Not that he needed to be happy about it. It was hard to be when there were darkspawn mages throwing spells at you, and your party’s own mage was proving new depths of incompetence.

“It’s an oil trap!” Fenris called to him, retreating backwards through the slick. “We can force them through it! Use your flames to set it alight!”

“What?” the mage called back.

And then Fenris took a nasty hit of sludge to the side of the face and was knocked over, and in the time it took him to get back up and regain his bearings the mage still hadn’t completed his task, the darkspawn were upon them all, and they were forced into close range combat with no cover from the enemy’s projectiles.

The mage did not know how to heal them once the melee had been completed either. Of all the corruption and vices provided by magic, there was one thing that Fenris had never known it to be – useless. He said as much.

The tower guard slapped the mage upside the head. “The next time the Grey Warden gives you an order, you’ll do it.”

The mage rubbed his head and said nothing.

This, too, was uncomfortable, in a way Fenris could not quite put his finger on. But he was occupied searching for the breach in the tower’s security and looked away.

For better or worse, they found the stairs up to the second floor before they found the darkspawn’s route inside. The moved upward, and by the third floor Fenris had acquired a band of war dogs that yowled and whined and snipped playfully at their heels.

The mage seemed unduly skittish, and was dragging behind. The tower guard made some idle comment about someone having been tracked before. And Fenris rolled his eyes – at least the mage was finally travelling at appropriate range for offensive spellcasting.

Fenris patted at the dogs absently, and hoped they would not be casualties of the darkspawn. Although such a thing seemed more likely than not.

“You know, they’ve really taken a liking to you~” Alistair teased. “You’re foreign, right? But you seem to be fitting right in with our national breed. I guess the Maker brought you here for a reason – dog whisperer, ready to lead the hounds in glorious battle~”

Fenris held back a chuckle. “An admirable calling, indeed,” he offered dryly, as he scratched at the head of the closest bitch, which was white with brown spots on her belly and teats. Another one with a deep reddish coat was sniffing at his heels.

The pinnacle of the tower was housed by a lone darkspawn, but one massive and hulking compared to the others they’d run into so far, with large horns like a Qunari. They had the clear advantage in numbers, though, and Fenris shot a few words to Alistair, before rushing forward and phasing behind the beast to attack. Alistair, the tower guard, and the three dogs rushed the beast from the front.

It was a quick fight, but the darkspawn managed to ram head-first into one of the Mabaris, and skewer it on its horns. There was a loud yelp, and a dying whimper, before Fenris managed to launch himself on the beast’s back and drive his sword through its chest.

He was breathing hard when it was over. He tried not to look at the two corpses piled together, as he climbed off the stack. The other dogs were whimpering.

“We’ve surely missed the signal,” Alistair said, bringing him back to the immediacy of their purpose here. “Let’s light the beacon quickly, before it’s too late.”

Fenris looked pointedly at the mage, who had been looking at the battlefield with a gaunt face. He looked up when he found Fenris watching him, but he stayed quiet and inert, even when Fenris gave an angry and expectant shrug. _The mage_ _was the one with_ _the_ _fire to light the beacon at his_ _fingertip_ _s, but_ _how_ _typical for Fenris to have to do all the work anyhow._ He stomped off to find a lit torch along the other wall of the tower.

Alistair followed after him, and reached for a torch that Fenris would have had to stand on tiptoe to reach. He looked a bit sheepish, and spoke to Fenris in an undertone. “You know he was probably press-ganged, right?” he asked. “I mean, I guess mages can’t technically be civilians but-” He seemed to wither under Fenris’s blank gaze, and laughed anxiously. “You know what- Never mind. You don’t have to be nice on my account.”

It was something to ask about later, but Alistair led the way to the hearth and bent down at the same level as Fenris, and they stoked the fire together until the beacon burned bright from the top of the tower.

Fenris leaned against a window frame at the edge of the tower, and watched the field with crossed arms. He’d sustained numerous injuries climbing the tower, scrapes and bruises and what was likely a concussion. The remaining two dogs curled against his feet, and Alistair leaned against the other window.

“What do we do now?” the mage asked, lost.

Fenris wondered if the others realised it. That they were in no condition to fight their way back down this tower and, even if they did so, who knew what they’d find at the bottom of it. The Teryn’s army was still all the way across the valley, and it would take anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour for the bulk of them to cut through the darkspawn line.

Fenris wasn’t sure if it was better to try to push their way down the tower now, in the wake of their trip upwards, or take a precious few minutes to rest before attempting it.

He watched the field – the pinpoint beacons of the torch-bearers outlining ally and enemy forces alike. The army waiting to ambush on the other side of the valley was still, and then they-

 _Vishante kaffas._ Fenris cursed under his breath. But he stood silently against the window and watched their imminent demise.

Alistair realised it a few moments after him. “Are they-? But- The king?”

He was sputtering right up until the moment the darkspawn burst up the stair landing and ran them through with arrows.


	7. Flemeth's Hut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the last for a good long while, but content warning for sexism and transphobia. Please recall that Morrigan grew up in a bog with her mother telling her she’d be expected to seduce and murder men as soon as she came of age. Her current worldview is rather narrow and also weird.

The room was crisp and dry from fire and kindling. Fenris was disoriented, as he awoke. He braced himself against a hard mattress stuffed with straw. The lyrium in his skin was quieter than normal, and what registered first was not the pain, but how the sweat had dried on his skin and his mouth was dusty and the headache was probably dehydration.

He wore nothing, save for the Warden’s pendant at his throat. His hand moved to grasp at it idly, and then down to scratch the inside of his thigh. He pressed himself up into sitting position, and let his eyes refocus.

“Ah, your eyes finally open. Mother shall be pleased.”

It was the witch. Fenris eyed her warily, though he knew the time for wariness had passed. He had little to be defensive of, sitting unarmed and stripped in the middle of her bed. She could not make him more vulnerable than he already was.

The witch paid him no mind though, as she poured from a pitcher and offered a cup of water in an extended hand.

Fenris accepted it and drank. He coughed, weakly at first, then stronger and clearer as his throat was lubricated by the water.

“I am Morrigan,” the witch said, “lest you have forgotten. I have just finished tending your wounds.” She looked to him pointedly. “You are welcome, by the way.”

Fenris fiddled with the cup and resisted the impulse to cover himself. It was not that he wasn’t grateful, he just couldn’t bring himself to thank her.

“How does your memory fare?” Morrigan asked.

Fenris cleared his throat. “The battle was lost. We were in the tower when the darkspawn swarmed.”

“Mother managed to save you and your friend. Though she mentioned she’d never tended to a patient quite as interesting as you. Like a lyrium battery. You were drifting between here and the Fade. ‘Twas a close call.”

She looked at him ponderously. And Fenris met her stare until she gave up hope for further answer.

Morrigan shrugged. “‘Tis quite lucky you had caught mother’s attention. The others were massacred. Now the darkspawn swarm the corpses, feeding, I think. And any survivors they drag beneath the ground, for unknown rituals. Quite grisly. Only a few stragglers managed to flee.”

If she intended to shock him, it did little to that effect. Morrigan pursed her lips.

“Your friend… he is not taking it well,” she added.

Fenris was not sure he’d ever had anything like a friend. It took him a moment. “You mean Alistair.”

“Yes, the dim-witted one who was with you before,” Morrigan agreed.

She paused, and Fenris could see the question on her face. Trying to arrange itself into something less trite, something that made sense for her.

“I will admit you had me fooled,” she finally said, with a ponderous scratch to her chin. “I mistook you completely for a man.”

Fenris watched her warily.

“Is this something you… do?” Morrigan asked. “You get close to them by pretending to be one of them, and then reveal yourself once they are already ensnared?”

Fenris was sure he couldn’t even begin to make sense of that.

“I suppose ‘tis one way to go about things,” Morrigan reasoned. “You are rather plain and mannish, without such a gimmick. We cannot all rely on natural beauty.”

Fenris watched as Morrigan lifted an elbow above her head and nearly preened.

He involuntarily pressed a finger idly to the lyrium line under his right nipple. There were no scars, because the lyrium covered them up. The lyrium itself was the scars.

Fenris flinched. _So he had been wrong. She could, indeed, make him more vulnerable still._

“May I have my clothes back now?” he snarled.

“My, you are disoriented,” Morrigan smiled smugly. “They are laid out on the floor next to you.”

Fenris turned and saw that they were. Along with Lethendralis and his pack and supplies.

“Mother asked to see you when you awoke,” Morrigan said. “Dress yourself and begone. And take your visitor with you, before he gets more fleas and slobber over the rug.”

Fenris blinked, and checked the other side of the bed before he could make the same mistake twice.

The Mabari was there – the one he’d fetched the flower from the Wilds for. He was curled right there atop the rug in a tight coil. And his ears perked and he stood, as Fenris turned his attention towards him.

“His bedside manner was atrocious, you will know,” Morrigan said, although she had turned away to stir a pot of stew. “He absolutely refused to leave your side. Growling and snapping. I would have had him skinned but,” she heaved a groan, “Mother found him amusing.”

Fenris could scarcely hear her though. He reached a hand out, to tentatively brush against the Mabari’s jaw. The dog wagged his stubby tail, and turned his head so that Fenris would scratch his ear.

So Fenris hadn’t been so alone as he’d thought. This dog had been here to guard him, even while the mages poked and prodded at him. Even hopelessly outmatched, it had waited in this hostile place for him.

The dog barked, as if in agreement, and then placed his paws on the edge of the bed, as if to leap atop it to snuggle next to Fenris.

“Ugh! Get down!” Morrigan snapped, and gave a threatening wave of her ladle. “I’ve no desire for a bed full of paw prints and mud.”

The dog’s ears drooped, and he sat back down on the rug.

“Dress and begone,” Morrigan said once more. And Fenris hurried to comply this time, less out of anxiety, and more spurred by the encouragement of the dog’s survival.

And Morrigan, for all her faults, turned back to her cooking pot and allowed him privacy for this.


	8. Asha’bellanar

Fenris was barely out the door of the hut before Alistair had him scooped up in a hug.

“You’re alive,” Alistair said, in a very small whisper. “They wouldn’t let me in to see you. I thought you were dead for sure.”

Fenris blinked one eye shut and tilted his head away. He was unused to this sort of attention and, by the time he thought to return the hug, the dog had growled and Alistair seemed to come to his senses. He released Fenris with a sudden jolt of his hands and an embarrassed glance to the side.

“See?” Flemeth said. “You worry too much, young man.”

Instead of facing him, Alistair ducked down to look the mabari in the eye. “I suppose if anything had changed you would have let us know, right boy? Howled to the moon.”

The dog barked in the affirmative.

“That’s it,” Alistair agreed, and reached out to let the dog sniff his hand.

Fenris assessed that, if anyone here was going to start providing useful information, it would be the witch’s mother. “You saved us,” he said succinctly.

“That I did,” Flemeth said airily.

“Why?”

“Well, we cannot have all the Grey Wardens dying at once, can we?” she snorted. “Someone has to deal with all these darkspawn. It has always been the Grey Wardens’ duty to unite the lands against the Blight.” She tilted her head expectantly. “Or did that change when I wasn’t looking?”

Fenris hesitated. “I am… hardly much of a Warden,” he finally decided. “I was a new recruit, barely initiated into the Order before all of this happened. I know next to nothing of Ferelden, or how to go about uniting its forces against a Blight.”

Flemeth tapped a long fingernail against her chin. She scrutinised him, head to toe.

“Feh!” she snorted. “You drank from their goblet, didn’t you? You’ll do.”

“I just- don’t understand it!” Alistair interrupted in a terse and choppy voice, still directed at the dog. “We were fighting the darkspawn. We were _winning_. The king had nearly defeated them! Why would Loghain do this?”

Fenris was given the impression that Alistair was not fully present, and had repeated some variation of this ad nauseam over the past- however long he’d been out here for.

Flemeth waved a hand vaguely in the air. “Perhaps he believes the Blight is an army he can outmanoeuvre. Perhaps he does not see that the evil behind it is the true threat.”

“The archdemon,” Alistair muttered darkly.

“What is the significance of this archdemon?” Fenris asked. “Our commanding officer was targeting it when his unit was… overwhelmed.”

Alistair made a little wheezing sound. Fenris curled his lip and glanced anxiously over to him.

Flemeth looked ponderously at the sky. “It is said that, long ago, the Maker sent the Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium to slumber in prisons deep beneath the surface. An archdemon is an Old God awakened and tainted by darkspawn.”

Fenris heard the important part of this, which was that Tevinter and its Magisters were to blame. How very typical.

Flemeth gave a hefty shrug. “Well, believe that or not, no Blight has ended without its archdemon falling. And no archdemon has fallen without a Grey Warden.”

“Then we should contact the rest of them,” Fenris ventured.

Alistair sighed and pressed himself to his feet, apparently finally ready to join the conversation in full. “Calian already summoned them,” he said. “They’ll come if they can. But I expect Loghain has already taken steps to stop them.” Alistair hung his head. “We must assume they won’t arrive in time.”

Nobody had anything to say to this for a moment, and then Alistair seemed to overflow with nervous energy. “I just don’t understand why he’d do this!”

Flemeth snorted something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Grow up.”

“Arl Eamon would never stand for this if he knew about it!” Alistair insisted. “The Landsmeet would never stand for it! There would be civil war!”

“Because the best time for nobles to fight and seize power amongst themselves is when the people under them are distracted with being massacred by the roving undead,” Fenris said pithily.

“Tell that to Loghain!” Alistair snapped irritably, before paling at his own outburst. He appeared to wither on the spot.

Fenris raised an eyebrow. “Touché,” he allowed. He spoke softer now, more encouragingly. “You believe this Arl Eamon would believe our word over that of the Teryn?”

“I know him. He’s a good man,” Alistair said, with an oddly wistful hope in the back of his throat. “Of course! Arl Eamon wasn’t at Ostagar! He still has all his men! We could go to Redcliffe and appeal to him for help!”

Fenris did not know of any human noble who would take the word of a dark-skinned elf, and a human so feeble he followed behind such, over that of a respected general. But Alistair looked so earnest… There was no point in questioning this further at this time.

“Do we have any other allies to call upon?” Fenris said.

“The treaties!” Alistair appeared to be having a breakthrough. “Grey Wardens can demand aid from dwarves, elves, mages, and other places! They’re obligated to help during a Blight!”

“I may be old,” Flemeth interjected, “but dwarves, elves, mages, this Arl Eamon, and who knows what else… This sounds like an army to me.”

The dog was starting to press its face eagerly into the back of Fenris’s hand, demanding pets. And it appeared everything was more or less decided when Morrigan appeared from out the hut.

“The stew is bubbling, Mother Dearest.” Morrigan’s words were dripping with false sweetness. “Shall we have three guests for the eve or none?”

Fenris felt himself bristle at the mere sound of her voice.

“The Grey Wardens are leaving shortly, girl,” Flemeth said. “And you will be joining them.”

This produced a rather sharp noise of protest from Morrigan, and several prodding bits of laughter from Flemeth.

Fenris should have known the other shoe would drop. This had probably been the plan all along. How did you tell a mage of hereto unforeseen powers, one that had saved your life no less, that you’d rather not babysit her bratty daughter?

“I’ve no wish to appear ungrateful. But if the witch would rather not join us, it is no trouble for us to make our own way,” Fenris tried.

“Pardon me,” Flemeth placed a ratty wrinkled hand against the rattier bust of her dress. “I had the impression you two needed assistance, whatever the form.”

“Have I no say in this?” Morrigan protested.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth…” Alistair began.

“We don’t want her,” Fenris cut him off.

“Let her guide you out of the Wilds,” Flemeth commanded. “If you truly do not desire her help after that, simply tell her so.”

It was a trap, but one that Fenris was hardly in a position to avoid. Not when he’d tried tact and directness both, and the mages seemed mutually uninclined to take no for an answer. It made no sense to fight them both here, when he might need fight only one later.

Morrigan went to pack her bag, and returned to speak with a great deal of affected deference.

“I am at your disposal, Grey Wardens,” she smiled. “I suggest a village north of the Wilds as our first destination. ‘Tis not far from here… Or if you prefer,” she hedged, “I shall simply be your silent guide.”

Fenris wanted to say something else, anything else. But Morrigan was all of her mother’s danger with none of the artful levity. Flemeth made a game of how far she could go and how close she could dance to your pains without causing permanent offence, and she played it well. Morrigan ramrodded straight into them, and acted confused when you snarled.

And she knew too much and Fenris didn’t trust her. So he said the only thing there was to say.

“We should move on.”


	9. Deep in the Wilds

Fenris was not allowed to sleep while his master struggled with the insomnia his demons brought. Danarius let him sometimes, for he was a benevolent master. For an hour or minutes or seconds, Fenris could not tell. Danarius would brush his fingers across the back of Fenris’s neck, and Fenris would be immediately awaken, wide eyed from dead sleep.

Sometimes Danarius would have orders for Fenris. More often he would simply say it was not Fenris’s right to be resting before going back to his correspondence, and Fenris was left sitting in silent suffocation, alert and delirious and his head and brands aching. He bore it without complaint. He was causing trouble for Danarius, and it was not his purview to be irritable.

This was how Fenris awoke now. He reached for the back of his neck, to rub away the gooseflesh left by Danarius’s grazing fingers. The edges of some nightmare receded. If he was sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning from his dreams, it was all the worse. There would be a punishment game. Danarius had banished him from the bed, and Fenris would need to cry and beg to be taken back. It was only a game, and Fenris had never found it humiliating until he had.

Fenris pulled at the silk sheets, but found only a woollen bedroll, insulated with straw. This was not the cold marble floor next to Danarius’s bed. This was not the nightmare, where he’d stood in a cavern or battlefield or basement amongst an army of demons. His brands were hurting again. Alistair was snoring. Fenris found he knew where the man was, twenty paces southwest, even though he could not yet see in this darkness.

He did not know where the witch was. If anyone had brushed their fingers across his neck, to rob him of his night’s sleep, it would have been her. Fenris preferred this, to the belief that his own mind had simply called a simulacrum of Danarius to torment him.

Fenris knew he would not be sleeping again anytime soon. He pulled himself out of the bedroll, checked his pack, still heavy with the pile of valuables they had to trade in Lothering. It was dark. He and Alistair had given up lighting a campfire in the dank marsh, and the only light was from the stars.

The dog approached him with a plaintive whine, but Fenris shushed him. “If I am not returned in the next few minutes, you may come for me.”

The dog was clearly an intelligent sort, because he curled atop Fenris’s bedroll to wait, around the remains of a hare he had chased down earlier. Fenris felt pleased, and walked through the trees looking for a private place to piss.

He did not find it, not before he’d found a beacon lit through the night. He hesitated, before following it up the slope of the land to a small clearing.

If Fenris and Alistair’s makeshift camp was paltry for lack of supplies, Morrigan shared no such difficulties. She appeared to have built a den of her own – warmed with mage fire, canopied by ivy, and lined with hides and pelts. She sat as if in a throne over her domain, poring over a collection of scrolls and jars of lyrium and elixir and balm.

The comparative luxury of it made Fenris sour.

“Trouble sleeping?” Morrigan asked. She waved Fenris over. “Or perhaps a desire for wittier companionship?”

Fenris did not know what to say to this. Morrigan had goaded Alistair until he’d snapped.

_Is my being upset and not wanting to talk really that hard to understand? Have you never lost someone important to you? Just what would you do if your mother died?_

Morrigan had cackled. _Before or after I stopped laughing?_

“Though I have forgotten none of you are much for wit,” Morrigan enunciated sharply at Fenris’s silence.

Fenris bristled. He was not a fool. “Your mother,” he grasped sharply at conversation. “She did something to my brands. They did not hurt, for a time.”

“Oh, did she?” Morrigan said curiously. “I was not aware they caused you pain.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Morrigan seemed to make an assessment.

“You wish me to do something for them?” she guessed. “My, but what would you give me in return for such a thing? ‘Tis a wonder…” She eyed him with a predatory smile.

Fenris said nothing. She already knew he had nothing to offer, save for pride. She wanted him to beg like Danarius had. Fenris would not have found it humiliating once. But he was no longer so stupid as that.

“What is your mother?” Fenris asked. “She is more than she appears.”

“Is that so?” Morrigan considered. “For many years I knew no other. I find her less mysterious than much of your ‘civilisation’? Tell me: how does she seem to you?”

“I have seen powerful mages, spirits, and abominations,” Fenris said. “And among them she is unique.”

“I see,” Morrigan laughed. “Then you are considering she is truly _the_ Flemeth of legend? Why not ask your fellow Warden if your interest is in tall tales?”

Daveth and Alistair had let details of such legends slip, through their conversations. Fenris had done his best to act less ignorant than he was. He had heard little of these ‘Witches of the Wild’. Whatever folk stories had been fit to share with a Tevinter slave, few dealt in areas as remote as the south of Ferelden.

“I have a greater interest in the truth,” Fenris said.

“Hmm, and what truth is this?” Morrigan asked. “Very few of the truths I know are fit for pleasant dreams.” But she relented a bit, and told him a little about a man named Conobar. “The demon within Flemeth transformed her into something else. I know not what. There are more things in this world and the next than you or I could ever hope to understand. What she became is unknown… I suspect even to Flemeth, herself.”

“If what you say is true…” Fenris considered. “I have known many mages that have extended their lifespan with the blood of others. Though few who have been so successful at it.” Being part of the Imperial Circle was a death sentence in its own way. If the demons didn’t kill you, your fellow Magisters would.

It was fortunate in its own way that Flemeth had found Fenris more valuable alive. Though Fenris struggled still to understand why. There was Flemeth who had healed him, who had stood over him and tapped the lyrium in him, and whispered too many years and fragments in Elvhish he did not understand. And then she had let him go. As she had let Morrigan go.

“Dare I ask of your own mother?” Morrigan was asking. Her face was suddenly raw with curiosity. Fenris could not be sure his own age, but in that moment he felt convinced Morrigan was nothing more than a child.

“I’ve nothing to share,” Fenris said testily. He must have had a mother – babes did not spring from nowhere – but- “ _Mages_ have stolen the memory of her from me,” he spat.

“I see,” Morrigan said, reacting to the sharpness in his tone. “And I suppose I am to be blamed for your weakness in allowing her to be taken?”

_Yes, Fenris had been weak. Who could not be weak, in the face of magic’s taint?_

“You asked me how Flemeth seemed to me,” Fenris snarled. “She seemed a mother. You curse her house and wish her dead, and then whither and crumble when she confirms your fears. At least you’ve had a mother to love.”

“There is nothing like love between us,” Morrigan bubbled with affront.

“More’s the pity to you,” Fenris snarled sarcastically.

“Love is a weakness. Even if you had pity for me, I’d have no need of it,” Morrigan insisted. But she looked young and small again. It made Fenris want to rip her to pieces.

The dog barked, and ran to Fenris’s feet, sniffing the perimeter of Morrigan’s camp.

“It will be daybreak before long,” Fenris said, although this was not quite true. It would be several hours at least.

But, in this moment, Morrigan seemed in complete agreement with him. “Indeed. Go wake your fellow fool Warden. Let us be gone. Before the darkspawn are upon us.”


	10. The Imperial Highway

Fenris had seen long stretches of the Imperial Highway on his way out of Tevinter, through the plains of Nevarra to where he’d caught ship out of Val Chevin. Its head in Minrathous was marked by great stone arches inlaid with silver and gems and statuary, and it was a popular site for street merchants and festival parades. Through parts of the Silent Plains, it was marked by nothing more than the indent of cart wheels and footsteps, where the grass had long since ceased to grow.

As it advanced into Lothering, the Highway became an elevated platform of white marble. It was there the bandits waited. The bandits fought. The bandits fled.

“Weaklings,” Morrigan scoffed, frost still streaming off her staff. “They were fools to get in our way.”

Fenris continued to wipe the blood splatter off his lip, off his blade. He said nothing, lest he find himself in the position of agreeing with Morrigan.

Morrigan moved quickly to tormenting Alistair, which appeared to be a favourite hobby of hers. “I have a wonder, Alistair, if you will indulge me,” she sing-songed, before she proceeded to call him dumb, blind, and whipped.

Fenris was concerned what might come out, during these conversations. But when he attempted to pull Morrigan aside and speak of it, she spouted some cryptic tripe. _I must wonder who you take me for. I would never interfere with another spider trying to spin their web?_

Whatever that was supposed to mean.

“What do you want to hear?” Alistair was demanding of her. “That I prefer to follow? I do.” He caught up with Fenris, who was stowing his sword and preparing for the descent down into the village. “The road branches on the other side,” he relayed. “I think it’s about time we talk about where we intend to go.”

Morrigan scoffed. “This should be good. And here I thought you intended to talk about your favourite variety of Mabari Crunch. Or mayhaps your navel. You’ve spent long enough contemplating it.”

“Ha ha,” Alistair laughed humourlessly, before turning back to Fenris. “I think what Flemeth suggested is the best idea. Those treaties… have you looked at them?”

Fenris had. Briefly. They were papers. With words on them.

“What do you mean?” he said, a little too stiffly to be natural.

Alistair, thankfully, breezed on. Seemingly missing the implication. “The treaties, the ones we got from Flemeth. There are three main groups we have these treaties for: the Dalish elves, the dwarves of Orzammar, and the Circle of Magi.”

Fenris was aware of the Dalish. Insofar as he knew, they prattled pompously while cowering in the trees, grubbing in the dirt for whatever scraps the human kingdoms threw them. They had all the freedom of the world afforded to them, and they chose to live like frightened cattle.

He had little desire to search them out, and even less desire to go negotiate with mages, regardless of their utility in battle.

“I also still think that Arl Eamon is our best bet for help. We might even want to go to him first. He should be at Castle Redcliffe.”

“I see,” Fenris said. He realised this sounded abrupt, and coughed. “I appreciate your advice.” The words felt awkward and stiff in his mouth.

The others did not seem to notice.

Morrigan huffed in annoyance.

Alistair smiled kindly. “I can give you directions, if you like.”

Fenris looked away. When he began to walk into the village, Alistair and Morrigan and the dog all followed.

“You mentioned the road out of this town branches,” Fenris offered. “Where does it go?”

“Well, the Imperial Highway runs west,” Alistair said.

“It circles around the Waking Sea, through Orlais and into Nevarra,” Fenris recited. He was eager to prove he was not entirely stupid.

“Ooh, very international~” Alistair whistled. “Yes, but, before it does any of that, it splits to circle the coasts of Lake Calenhad. On the southern side of the lake, through the mountain passes, you have Redcliffe. And at the northern end is Kinloch Hold, more commonly known as Ferelden’s Circle Tower. We’d need to take the road that circles up the west side of Lake Calenhad to get to Redcliffe, and continue further up it into the Frostbacks to get to Orzammar.”

“So the path around Lake Calenhad will take us to most of where we need to go,” Fenris considered. “And what is to the East of here?”

“The West Road- Yes, I know we won’t be travelling west on the West Road. Funny, isn’t it?”

“You would find the moss on a stone amusing,” Morrigan said blithely, from where she was following at five paces.

Alistair turned back to snap at her. “Oh, I get it. This is the part where we’re shocked to discover how you’ve never had a friend your entire life?”

“The West Road,” Fenris insisted.

“Oh, right.” Alistair flushed and returned to his directives. “The West Road leads up to Denerim, the capital. You must have come down it on your way with…” he trailed off. “It runs up along the edge of the Brecilian Forest. It’s a dead zone, so far as civilisation goes. We’ll probably have to search the area to find the Dalish, but there’s nothing else out east except Gwaren. But most only travel there by sea.”

Fenris hummed in consideration. “And what accounts for the industry in these locales?”

Alistair seemed almost flabbergasted. “Well, Redcliffe is the administrative centre for much of the Bannorn, which Lothering itself is on the southern end of. It’s mostly farming land – beets, peas, potatoes, livestock. Rice along the River Dane. And freshwater fishing out of Lake Calenhad. Up in the Frostbacks you have smaller settlements that get by on lumber and hunting – not that different from how the Avvars live. Some mining too, but the dwarves mostly have that covered. Though they trade through underground networks even now, so they don’t always have to go through the same checkpoints the rest of us do… You know, I feel a little like I’m being quizzed?”

Fenris blinked up at him. “You are very knowledgeable,” he said.

Morrigan made sounds like she might be ill. “The trials of travelling with _two_ who are exceptionally dim. I suppose if you do not take turns patting one another on the back, nobody else will rush to do so for you.”

This time, Alistair took no note of her.

“This is…” He looked like he’d tasted something bitter. “This is just what they expect you to know when you…” He scratched the back of his head. “I was always getting bored and running off in the middle of my lessons and causing a scene,” he laughed.

“And yet you have retained what you needed to know,” Fenris said simply.

“I-” Alistair blinked harshly. “I guess I have.”

With only a little encouragement, he continued to tell Fenris of the lay of the land, the political structure of the Bannorn, and the various crafts exported out of the Coastlands. Fenris listened so as to memorise, repeating Alistair’s words in his own head, knowing he would not be able to make sense of most of it until later. The rest of his attention was on those they passed as they descended into the refugee camp outside the town walls. They were heckled in turn by blight-ravaged refugees tired of bloodshed, local farmers tired of their fields being overtaken, elvhen beggars with no pride at all, and Morrigan, upon occasion. Although less and less often the more they continued to shun her.

When they reached the wall, a heavily armoured guard was shouting that they would find no shelter, and best move on. He said the word _friend_ like a stranger, from the safety of a full plate of armour complete with a helmet to disguise his appearance. The Chantry did not have room for them, Fenris understood. And if it did, an elf dark and armed and foreign would not be allowed in.

“Highever is… it’s famous for its laurel groves,” Alistair was saying. “Or for the fact that it supplies linens to all of Ferelden and half of the Marches…” His voice dropped a little, like he was afraid of being heard. “Duncan was from Highever.”

Fenris turned for a moment, to give Alistair his full attention. Too much. Looked away, back to the dirt path curving through Lothering. _Ah, the subject that had Alistair silent and grief-ridden for days._

Fenris did not know what to say, but- “Did you… wish to speak of him?”

“You don’t have to do that.” Alistair waved him off half-heartedly. “I know you didn’t know him as long as I did.”

Fenris watched his feet for a moment. “He saved my life,” he finally said. Because it was true. Duncan had saved Fenris’s life, forced Fenris into his service, and then he’d died.

Alistair huffed. “Mine too, in a way… It feels like I abandoned him. It probably sounds stupid, but part of me wishes I was with him. In the battle.”

“If you had been there, then you’d both be dead,” Fenris said. Because this was also true. “ _Na via lerno victoria_. Only the living know victory,” he translated.

“They’re also the only ones that know defeat,” Alistair laughed humourlessly. “Like I said, it’s stupid.”

“It isn’t,” Fenris said.

Alistair sulked. “I should have handled it better. Duncan told me right from the beginning this could happen. Any of us could die in battle. I shouldn’t have lost it, not when so much is riding on us… I’m sorry.”

“There is no need to apologise.”

Alistair seemed unsure, but after a moment he relaxed. “I’d like to go to Highever when this is all over, have a proper funeral for him. If we’re still alive. I don’t think he had any family to speak of.”

And who would mourn Fenris when he was gone? There was nobody in the world that would care if he lived or died. Suddenly, he felt bursting with envy. Duncan at least had-

“He had you,” Fenris said.

Any response Alistair might have had was cut off when Fenris caught a sudden movement in the corner of his eye. He turned to watch an elderly Chantry Sister stumble, but hold fast against the human men pressing her back.

The leader among them caught Fenris’s eye, and seemed to mistake it for interest.

“Ho! You there! You look able! Would you care to make a tiny profit helping a beleaguered businessman?”

Fenris approached, scowling. Mabari growling at his heels. “And what make you think I would want to help _you_?”

The man blinked, like he’d been knocked back himself, but recovered swiftly enough. “Did I mention ‘profit’?”

The Sister turned to appeal to him as well. “He is charging outlandish prices for things people desperately need. Their blood is filling his pockets!”

“I have limited supplies,” the man protested. “The people decide what those supplies are worth to them.”

“You bought most of your supplies from these very people last week!” The Sister’s cries were shrill. “Now they flee for their lives, and you want to talk business?!”

Morrigan decided that this moment was the best to cut back in. “‘Tis only survival of the fittest,” she said smugly. “All of these cretins would do the same in his shoes, given the chance.”

Morrigan was, of course, correct. But Fenris felt his lips purse, and he glared at her out of the corner of his eye.

Just because the world worked that way didn’t mean Fenris had to go out of his way to be a part of it.

“I would suggest lowering your prices, if you intend to keep your goods.” Fenris wondered if he needed to draw his sword to make his point. If he even needed to lift his hand to the pommel.

He hadn’t.

“Maker’s breath!” the merchant cursed. “Sometimes it’s truly not worth operating this far south!” But he capitulated, and began hashing out terms with the Sister, under the protective watch of Fenris and the others.

“So we have come to solve every squabble in the village, personally?” Morrigan whistled. “My, but the darkspawn will be impressed.”

Fenris scowled. He did not need this. “We will gather more information if we split up,” he announced.

“There is a tavern on the other side of the village,” Morrigan said, the faithful guide in this.

“Then we’ll meet there before sundown,” Fenris agreed. He pulled his pack off his back – heavy with silver ornamentation looted from the tower and weaponry pulled from the darkspawn – and shoved it at Alistair. Ignored the wheeze the man made as it hit his chest. “You know what supplies we need. No doubt you’ll do better to barter for them than me.”

Alistair seemed unsure of this prospect, but unwilling to argue.

Fenris bent down, and spoke softly to the dog. “Will you watch after him for me?” he asked, petting the soft felt of the Mabari’s ear. “Make sure the merchant doesn’t give him any trouble? Come track me down if there are any problems.”

The Mabari barked happily, and wagged his stubby tail.

“And the dog is assigned his keeper,” Morrigan tisked. “So, if I have it correct, the hierarchy of the Grey Wardens is new recruits, their pets… and then you, Alistair.”

Alistair was already digging through the packs for items to barter, but he took a moment to mutter at Morrigan. “Couldn't you crawl into a bush somewhere and die?”

Fenris left before he could be party to more of this. Oddly, the Chantry Sister walked into step beside him. He was not sure who was following whom, as they made their way over to the entrance of the Chantry and, as Fenris’s steps flagged just outside the walls, the Sister too stopped and nodded her head to him.

“Thank you for your generous assistance. May the Maker watch over your path.” And she crossed the threshold into the Chantry courtyard, and left him behind.

He was next to the job board, and the Chanter called loudly. “For a foundation of stone, marble, or any precious metal is worthless if faith in the Maker is absent!”

Fenris flinched involuntarily. He didn’t know about the Maker itself, but he felt it true that those without anything to believe in were weak.

But- Faith or no, weak or strong, valued or unwanted or worthless – the Chantry would pay anyone to do its dirty work.

The Chanter’s boy approached him. “I haven’t seen you before. You look strange,” he said. “So many strangers are about now.”

Fenris looked down at him, at the reddish fuzz covering his shaved head, and was met with a look of intense curiosity.

“Do you know about the Chant of Light?” the boy said.

“I do.”

“Do you know what a Chanter is?” the boy asked. And then answered before Fenris could say either way. “It’s one of them that can only say the Chant of Light. His board has letters of good deeds to be doing.”

Fenris was familiar. They discomforted him slightly, reminded him of those prisoners of war given qamek and brainwashed by the Ben-Hassrath.

The boy continued eagerly. “My father fixed Widow Allison’s roof once and the Chanter paid him, he did.”

“A learned child is a blessing upon his parents and onto the Maker,” the Chanter praised.

Fenris tried not to grimace.

_And those unlearned? A blessing on no one._

He fished a copper from his belt, and presented it to the boy, who grabbed for it with wide eyes and grubby hands.

“Read the board aloud for me,” Fenris said. “Anything you think suited for a mercenary.”


	11. The Cage

Fenris showed the woman how to make traps. First out of wire, then of tightly bound twine – so long as it was strong enough not to snap. You only needed a simple mechanism for it, and a post to string it to.

“I have never s-seen a knot like it,” the woman stuttered.

It was how Fenris had been taught, in a jungle far away. He stared her down. She would not forego his payment, simply because she had never seen it before.

The woman shook badly, but relented. “S-So, um… It catches the foot, or the neck, and the more the animal struggles the more it um…”

“Suffocates,” Fenris finished for her.

“It’s prolonged. That’s very… brutal,” the woman said.

Fenris was not sure what to say. Did she think death pretty?

She winced under his gaze. Folded her hands over each other, and gazed down from where she was crouched next to him in the field. The tall grass criss-crossed over her like camouflage.

“I frighten you,” Fenris stated. It was a miracle and a half that she had agreed to come into this field alone with him.

“All st-strangers do,” the woman said.

That explained the miracle. _Being afraid of everything and being afraid of nothing were really the same thing._

“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I didn’t mean to offend you… You seem nice.”

Fenris crouched a moment longer. If he was to be nice-

“The darkspawn are not simply a rumour,” Fenris said. “You’d do better to take what you can and head north, than try to barricade yourself and wait them out.”

His words seemed to fall off her shoulders. The woman did not react. He was not getting through to her. She did not want to hear him.

The woman pulled a pouch of money out of her skirt, and opened it to count right in front of him. Sixty silver pieces. She brushed his hand, gently and purposefully, when she gave him the money. “Thank you for the traps.”

Fenris sighed. He had other things to be doing.

He culled a lair of bandits out of a camp near the woods, dug through their packs for gold and the ransacked goods to return to the Chantry. He was a poor poacher, but inexpertly skinned a few wolves for pelts. They were proof of the job he’d done. He would have done the same with the bears, if they had not caught the blight sickness. To his understanding, only Grey Wardens were protected from it. If having already been infected with it could be considered a protection.

He walked back through the field to the town, with the pelts and packs, when he passed the cage.

The prisoner was speaking inside. And, for lack of horns, Fenris had mistaken him for a human, until he heard a language and prayer familiar to him. In many ways more familiar to him than the cutting edges of the trade tongue.

“ _Struggle is an illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, the sea is unchanged. There is nothing to war against. Victory may be found in the Qun._ ”

Fenris felt himself falter and come to a halt. He had no faith that anything good would come from his curiosity, but found himself moved by it anyhow. He flipped the pelts from one shoulder to the other, and walked to the cage.

“ _Peace, friend. There is nothing to war against,_ ” he greeted in Qunlat.

The Qunari startled from his prayers. Eyed Fenris wearily. He was gaunt, with sallow circles about the eyes.

“ _I did not think to hear words in my own tongue again. Not before my death… Are you a demon?_ ”

Fenris snorted. “ _You think me a demon? Your lips are not sewn. You think highly of yourself to assume a demon interested in you._ ”

“ _Pashaara_ ,” the Qunari huffed. “ _And if a demon wished to sway me with the sight and sound of home, he would probably not appear an elf with a nose like a Seheron Nepenthes, and a tongue weighed heavy with the accent of Tevene. I suppose you can be none other than yourself._ ”

Could he? Fenris wondered. “ _Why have you been imprisoned?_ ”

“ _I’ve been placed here by the Chantry._ ”

“ _What for?_ ”

“ _I’ve been convicted of murder._ ”

“ _And the convictions are-_ ”

“ _True,_ ” the Qunari cut him off. “ _I have been waiting here twenty days. It will not be much longer, but I hope to see the darkspawn before I die._ ”

Fenris looked about the cage. “ _They took your sword._ ”

“ _They did not,_ ” the Qunari said.

“ _It would have been the first thing I would have done,_ ” Fenris laughed humourlessly. “ _We did it often with Qunari captives, to break their spirits._ ”

This Qunari seemed to be made of tougher stuff than that, and observed him passively.

“ _Once the interrogations were done, the more malleable were taken in by slave masters,”_ Fenris continued. “ _The rest executed. Tevinter is more wasteful of its capita than your Ben Hassrath._ ”

“ _Frivolity,_ ” the Qunari said. “ _For that, the Qun will be victorious, and Tevinter will fall._ ”

Fenris shrugged. That was not his problem any more. “ _At another time, we might have met on the battlefield. I would have slain you._ ”

“ _You would have tried,_ ” the Qunari said, but Fenris caught the edge of amusement in his voice. “ _I am Sten of the Beresaad._ ”

It was not a name, but perhaps that was fine. Fenris did not have a true name to offer him either.

“ _I am Fenris… of the Grey Wardens,_ ” he added, simply to have his own title.

“ _A Grey Warden?_ ” Sten raised an eyebrow. “ _My people have heard legends of the Grey Wardens’ strength and skill… Though I suppose not every legend is true. You intend to stop the Blight…_ ” He seemed almost wistful.

Fenris considered. If this was a Sten with an active assignment from his Arishok, Fenris might have felt differently. But this man had lost his platoon. Without a sword, there was no way for him to report back. They might have once been enemies, but time and circumstances had weathered their differences. Veterans of the same war. Slaves to Tevinter, or the Will of the Qun. Both alone in this foreign place, with no hope of returning home.

“ _You spoke of frivolity,_ ” Fenris said. _“Your talents are wasted here. I am in need of allies in the fight against the Blight, and you appear seasoned and disciplined as a platoon commander._ ”

Sten hesitated. “ _My choices have been made. Whatever might have been, my life is forfeit now._ ”

“ _You would die here at the behest of these people._ ” Fenris snorted. “ _They do not even think you a person._ ” They were knife-ears and ox-men and foreigners to the residents of this sleepy little town, less than dirt.

“ _It is not at their behest,_ ” Sten said. “ _I wished to be here._ ”

“ _Why?_ ”

Sten’s lips twitched, and he spoke slowly and softly. “ _Either you have an enviable memory, or a pitiable life, to know nothing of regret._ ”

Fenris flinched. For a long, long time he had, indeed, known nothing of regret.

“ _Who did you murder?_ ”

“ _The people of a farmhold. Eight humans, including the children._ ”

Fenris remembered the screams. He remembered cutting through their soft skin, fatty with youth, like butter.

“ _It is something monstrous,_ ” Fenris was saying. “ _Something only an animal, a wild beast, would do._ ”

“ _I agree,_ ” Sten agreed. “ _Death will by my atonement._ ”

Fenris set the wolf pelts on the ground. Removed the packs taken from the bandits. He drew his sword from its sheath.

“ _Stand back_ ,” he told Sten. And the man, after a moment’s lingering consideration, dutifully pressed himself against the back of the cage.

“ _Find another atonement,_ ” Fenris commanded. And he jammed Lethendralis between the gaps, just above the lock at the gate, and pried at the bars with all his might.


	12. Lothering

The lock on the cage broke. So did Lethendralis. Fenris searched what he had pillaged from the bandits, and found a heavy mace.

“ _Do you not need a weapon yourself?_ ” Sten asked, when Fenris handed it over to him.

“ _I have my gauntlets_ ,” Fenris said. Though truly he was moody for the loss of his sword. It had served him well, even from before his time as a fugitive.

It seemed perhaps he might be able to purchase, or otherwise negotiate a replacement, once he got back into the village. But this proved to be a vain hope. Escorting a Qunari around a village of humans was bound to bring unwanted attention, even when the Qunari in question wasn’t a wanted criminal. Fenris hoped that the tentative peace brought down by their intimidating presence would last long enough to reconvene with Alistair and the others at the village tavern.

The peace seemed already broken when they arrived though. A pair of soldiers in full uniform bolted past, howling something about murderous Grey Wardens. A few of the villagers cheered their retreat. Others seemed more ambivalent.

Fenris considered the tavern door for a moment, but thankfully did not have to wait long before a bedraggled-looking Alistiar stumbled out, followed by Fenris’s Mabari, and a Chantry Sister with bright red hair.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Alistair sighed, heaving no less than three tents and bedrolls off his back. “I got us supplies. And visited the Chantry. And, um, I don’t suppose you’ve heard that Loghain blamed the Wardens for the loss at Ostagar, and we all have bounties on our head?” He gave a painful looking smile.

“I had heard that, yes,” Fenris said. It was among the gossip he’d overhead about the village.

“Well, it looks like our cover is kind of blown,” Alistair said delicately.

The Mabari barked, and huddled next to Fenris.

Fenris sighed. He was still carrying the wolf pelts, and the packs from the bandits. “I’ve been running jobs off the Chanter’s Board. I had hoped to collect on the jobs performed, but it is probably best we leave at this point.”

“Any jobs not collected upon may be considered a donation to the Chantry,” said the red haired Sister. “I think that a noble goal in of itself.”

“Who is this?” Fenris asked.

“Oh, I am Leliana,” the Sister said. “You must be Alistair’s fellow Grey Warden. A noble position, one fit for a great hero.”

Fenris blinked at her, and then narrowed his eyes at Alistair. “This is the reason everyone’s suddenly aware of who we are?”

“She’s, um-” Alistair looked helplessly between Fenris’s glare and Leliana’s blankly expectant smile. “She’s coming with us!” he announced.

“Why?” Fenris asked.

“Because she, uh, said so?” Alistair said apologetically.

“Saying ‘no’ never crossed your mind?” Fenris asked.

“ _And this one is green and feckless_ ,” Sten offered in Qunlat.

“ _Weren’t we all once?_ ” Fenris grumbled.

“ _Not to this extent_ ,” Sten mumbled.

“Um, excuse me-!” Alistair protested. “Some of us can’t speak… whatever it is that you’re speaking.”

“We were, uh-” Fenris stalled. “Just talking about… the Chant of Light…”

“ _And_ you _are also more feckless than you first appear,_ ” Sten said pointedly.

“You know, I’m not the only one that showed up at our meeting spot with an extra date,” Alistair protested weakly. “That’s not the Qunari that everyone’s been talking about, is it?”

“I am,” Sten said, before Fenris could decide whether to deny it.

“The Reverend Mother said he slaughtered an entire family. Even the children,” Leliana said in a hushed voice.

“It is as she says,” Sten agreed.

“Oh, yes, just- Peachy,” Alistair said sarcastically. “I’m sure we’ll all have a lot of fun together.” But Fenris watched as he clearly lost steam on whatever further accusations he planned to throw, and sighed.

“Sten has not eaten in nearly three weeks,” Fenris said.

“Oh, poor dear,” Leliana clicked her tongue softly. “Truthfully, I did not agree with the Reverend Mother’s judgement in this,” she said conspiratorially. “To be left to starve, or taken by the darkspawn… No one deserves that. Not even a murderer.” She tapped one of the packs Alistair had dropped. “You have bread,” she commanded. “I will see if I can get a mug of weak ale for him.” She disappeared back into the tavern.

Alistair sighed, but dutifully dug through the pack for a roll of bread. He was on his knees, when he handed it up to Sten.

Sten accepted it with both hands and a mild look of surprise. “ _Meravas_. You have my thanks.”

“Sure,” Alistair agreed. “Just don’t wolf it down too quickly.”

They stood a moment, awkwardly, as Sten ate and they waited for Leliana to reappear. Fenris took a moment to bundle the wolf pelts and help Alistair rearrange their packs.

“Where is the witch?” Fenris asked.

“You mean Morrigan?” Alistair replied. “I haven’t seen her.”

Fenris waited a moment, and when nobody swooped out from the rafters, he said this.

“Perhaps she has decided to move on, and will no longer trouble us.”

Alistair snorted. “If only we were that lucky.” But he seemed to perk up at the thought. “Perhaps we’ll also get out of here without incident.”

They were not that lucky.

“I don’t know if you Wardens killed King Cailan and, Maker forgive me, I don’t care. That bounty on your head could fill a lot of hungry bellies.”

When the enemy was this committed to killing and dying, there was nothing to do but meet them. Fenris dropped the packs off his shoulder and flexed his hands in his gauntlets as the ambushing party approached. Sten had similarly gone for his mace. The Mabari charged. Even Leliana had not faltered, face grim but resigned as she reached for the pair of daggers at her belt. Alistair was the only one left fumbling and sputtering as they were once again betrayed. And then Fenris lost sight of him, as they were surrounded.

A motley collection of farmers and refugees, armed only with sickles and spades and hoes, were hardly a match for trained soldiers and a war dog. But Fenris badly missed his sword as he ducked underneath the swings of the assailant’s weapon, and drove his hand through their stomach.

One of the refugees shrieked, like Fenris was a demon. Not even the one he’d impaled on his gauntlet. And Fenris had a burning desire to be rid of them all. He ripped through two more, blood splattering over his face and knees and coating him up to the elbows. He was panting heavily by the time he was done, and it took some effort not to chase after the farmers that had fled shouting in fear.

Alistair sheathed his sword. “Well that’s… new,” he said, looking at the heart, still beating in Fenris’s hand.

Leliana looked a bit more pale than usual. Sten muttered something about Tevinters and turned away.

Fenris cursed. He squashed the heart in his hand and threw it to the ground.

The dog came up to sniff it, and before picking it up to chew plaintively.

“So… You haven’t done that before,” Alistair said lamely.

“Thus far, we have not been fighting living beings,” Fenris said. “I was not sure the darkspawn would cease attacking, once their hearts removed.”

Alistair chuckled nervously. “Well, we’ve probably left some kind of impression on this village. Can’t imagine what stories they’ll spread around. The Wardens go around freeing murderous Qunari and ripping people’s hearts out for their dogs to eat. Very Hound Warriors.” It had the cadence of a joke.

Fenris scowled to cover his hurt. “More likely, they’ll be dead of the Blight, or of starvation, before they get around to telling anyone anything,” he snarled.

The Mabari was licking the blood from his right hand, and Fenris turned it around to pet him gently. At least he still had one supporter.

He picked up his packs, and continued on. And he listened, for the way the others stepped in behind him as they made their way up the ramp to the Imperial Highway, and then on out of Lothering.

Fenris felt, with startling feeling, that he hated this town, and was glad to have it behind him.

It was a sombre walk. Sten was completely silent, but for his footsteps, behind Fenris on the left. The dog trotted loyally at Fenris’s side on the right. Alistair and Leliana lagged behind, and Fenris caught snippets of their conversation.

_Do you think he’s right? About what will happen to all those people we left behind in Lothering?_

_Some will find their way to Denerim. Many will die. As the Maker wills._

More mumbles.

_If the Blight isn't stopped, everyone will die. You are doing what you must, Alistair, as is he. You will need to steel yourself, you know this… I don't believe you. And either way, it's not as if any of us has a choice._

And then silence.

They walked for an hour or two, before the sun had really sunk too low in the sky to continue. But there was a beacon out further off the road, and it seemed to be staying still as Fenris and the others approached. As they neared, it spread out into the warm orange glow of firelight. And by the time Fenris recognised the canopy and who they might be approaching, two yellow pinpricks, like the eyes of a cat, turned and locked on him. They drew him in like a spell, pulled to the centre of her gravity.

“Witch,” Fenris greeted when they came upon her.

“Warden,” Morrigan returned, standing up over the fire. She looked between the rest of the group with a pursed lip, like they’d displeased her. “It certainly took you long enough to catch back up.”


	13. The Witch

“ _Bon Appetit_ , as the Orlesians say!”

“My thanks,” Fenris grunted moodily, as he accepted the bowl of green sludge and piece of bread rind Alistair handed him.

Alistair had spent the last hour fishing for compliments in having managed to negotiate a cut of lamb from the merchant at Lothering. It hardly seemed an accomplishment, when all he’d proceeded to do with it was boil it down to slop. It was not appealing, but food rarely was. Fenris scooped the stew against the hard bread and ate anyhow.

Alistair settled in next to Fenris with his own bowl. “So… she followed us,” he said frankly, pinpointing the source of Fenris’s current moodiness.

Fenris curled further in on himself. Ferelden nights were too cold. He huddled closer to the fire and to the Mabari, who was already whimpering and snoring in his sleep.

“You can’t just let her follow us around – a maleficar and Maker-knows-what else?”

Fenris grunted. This wasn’t about what _he_ could or couldn’t do. This was not about what _Fenris_ wanted, but- “I want her gone,” he agreed darkly.

The fire crackled. Fenris poured the stew down his throat.

“You know,” Alistair hesitated. “You could just ask her to leave.”

Fenris considered. There was no getting a mage to do anything they were not already amenable to. But was there anything truly stopping him from asking Morrigan to leave?

He and Alistair turned back to look at Morrigan, away from the rest of the group with her own campfire.

Morrigan might attack him, or thrall him, if he displeased her. But would she? It would be a rather extreme response. Especially given she was outnumbered here in this camp.

The Mabari whimpered and kicked in his sleep.

Fenris was not sure what emboldened him to stand.

“I will tell her,” he announced, flexing his wrists and cracking his neck.

“I’ve got your back!” Alistair announced. “Just… all the way from over here.” He shifted down in his seat. “Let me know how it goes.”

Fenris huffed but… Alistair’s flippancy was more bolstering than not.

He practised what he might say in his head as he strode across the field to where Morrigan had made camp. Flemeth had told him to allow Morrigan to see them out of the Wilds and into Lothering, and he had, and now their mutual association was done.

But when Morrigan looked across at him, with those sharp eyes and haughty turn of her chin, all of it seemed to flood out of his head.

“Why are you still here?” he snapped, and he heard how accusatory it sounded.

Morrigan gaped. “I am here because Flemeth commanded me to aid you. Why? Do you-”

“For her?” Fenris pressed. “Then you do not wish to be here.”

He had meant to catch her in a lie. But Morrigan blinked stupidly. “What _I_ wish? ‘Tis not about that.”

Fenris scowled. Her posturing was empty. If this was not about what he wanted, if it was not about what she wanted, then what was it about?

“I want you to leave,” he said, and he made his expression as firm as he dared.

“Are you-” Morrigan’s mouth snapped shut like she had tasted something foul. “Very well,” she said brusquely. “I see you have chosen to throw your lot in with _fools,_ ” she flipped her hands at their camp across from hers. “I will not be where I am not valued. May you find your victory on your own.”

She did not wait, before folding her tent and bundling her furs. She collected her things and threw them into her pack, with angry, jerky movements of her hands.

Fenris watched a moment. They had been the ones to come across her spot along the highway, and build their camp around hers. He knew a better person would have told her to stay the night. To wait until the morning to depart from them at least.

But he was afraid a night would turn into the next day would turn into a fortnight, and they’d never be rid of her. So instead he turned away. Morrigan let him go. She did not strike the back he bared to her.

“So what happened?” Alistair asked, when he made his way back towards their shared campfire.

“She’s… leaving,” Fenris said, still blinking the surprise out of his eyes.

“Really?” Alistair perked up.

Fenris shrugged. “I told her to leave,” he said. “She’s packing right now.”

“Nice,” Alistair sucked a sizzling breath between his teeth.

“Did I hear you right?” Leliana cut into their conversation from the other side of the fire. “You told her to go? She’s leaving right now?”

Fenris felt so relieved he hardly knew what to say. “So she is.” He smiled.

Leliana turned on Alistair. “And you’re celebrating this?” She frowned “I cannot believe you two. You cannot send a poor, defenceless woman out on her own into the night.” She huffed angrily and stood. “I am going to go talk to her.”

They watched as she strode purposefully across the field to Morrigan’s side.

“Poor?” Alistair repeated dumbly.

“Defenceless…” Fenris frowned.

“Oh, Maker, she doesn’t know, does she?” Alistair fretted.

But neither of them moved, except to turn their heads to peer at distance at Leliana’s approach.

Leliana raised the skirt of her Chantry robes in a small curtsy, and offered her hand to Morrigan.

Morrigan stared down at it like it might be a snake.

After a moment, Leliana let her hand drop, but she continued to smile and chatter, irregardless of Morrigan’s scowl as she continued packing her things.

This continued longer than Fenris thought it might, frankly. But then Leliana was reaching for Morrigan’s arm. Morrigan raised her palm, and then Leliana was reeling back with a muffled screech. Morrigan’s lips curled in satisfaction, as she turned away and doused the fire with her magic. And Leliana stomped back across the field to their campsite in darkness.

Alistair began fumbling through his pack for a spare piece of cloth.

“Ugh!” she whined, when she reached them. She rubbed at the frost that had coated her brow, and soaked the front of her robes. Her hair was blown back and frozen at the tips. “You could have warned me.”


	14. Twisted Path

They had been travelling west for close to four days, up in the mornings and down in the evenings, when Fenris finally reached his limit.

His stride was shortening. His muscles were tightening. His brands were burning. They had ambushed a group of bandits, and Fenris had stumbled over a tripwire and nearly taken a knife to the side of his head after his arm seized mid swing.

“We are camping here for the night,” Fenris announced brusquely, once the bandits were dispatched.

“In… the middle of the camp that has just proved to be ambush-proof?” Alistair laughed, as he and Leliana picked through the bandits’ supplies.

“There are already traps set around the camp, and a fire pit already dug,” Fenris pointed out. The fog in the valley did obscure the view of any that might approach, but that was the least of Fenris’s concerns.

Alistair scratched the back of his head and looked at him disbelievingly. “It’s only been three hours since we last packed camp?”

Fenris was not sure what to say to this. He coughed uncertainly. “Do as you will. I am camping here for the night.” He turned to find a caravan to hide in. Augustus barked and trotted at his heel.

Sten was standing stiffly at the closest path off the centre of camp. Fenris was not lucky enough to avoid further scrutiny.

“ _Why are we stopping?_ ” Sten shook his head. “ _Is this delay needful?_ ”

“ _Yes,_ ” Fenris answered and brushed past.

There was a caravan blockading a path that seemed to go northeast up into the hills, and Fenris judged it secluded enough to bed down in. He pushed a few of the crates aside – at least the bandits probably had something Fenris would be able to salvage for a weapon – and formed what could best be described as a nest out of his bedroll and blanket. There was some straw in a few of the crates and Fenris piled it for fluff before lying down on his back and waiting.

Augustus grabbed at the edge of the blanket, seemingly intent on a game of tug-of-war, and when Fenris did not oblige him he bounded around the nest. An endless font of energy.

Fenris sighed. He supposed a dog would not tell his secrets. “I can not play with you now.”

Augustus tilted his head curiously and yipped moodily.

“It is not that I do not want to,” Fenris huffed. “But if I do it will only irritate the brands more. It is not so bad I cannot move or fight or play with you now. But what happens if more bandits come, and then darkspawn, and then the hunters, with no chance to rest between?”

He’d be paralysed, writhing on the ground with lyrium throbbing through every muscle in his body, as Danarius stood calmly over him and collected him.

Fenris shook his head. “They should have given you to someone else.”

Augustus whined, but came to lick Fenris on the chin before jumping out the caravan and running off.

Fenris supposed that if the kennel master had given the dog to anyone else, whoever they were would be dead by now. But still- As low maintenance as the Mabari was, he was beginning to look a bit shabby. He would have done better with a master that had time to indulge him.

Fenris spent an hour or two attempting meditative stillness to the best of his ability, counting the grains of wood on the posts of the caravan. It was dull and boring and necessary. He was not particularly tired, and not particularly good at getting to sleep even when he was tired.

But eventually he must have drifted off, because the next he knew there was a pit of fire and pitch. Hot wet sludge was pouring up his skin. There was a flap of black wings and blazing eyes, and a dragon was letting out a terrifying roar that made Fenris want to scurry and run and fight. And a hand was on his shoulder was shaking him awake.

Fenris seized the wrist of the hand. But it was tangible and solid, not some illusory sensation meant to torment him. It seemed unfazed by Fenris’s nails digging into it, and Fenris released it apologetically.

“Bad dreams? You were tossing and turning in your sleep.”

Fenris blinked harshly. Alistair was sitting over him on his knees. The crates were piled high to one side of the covered caravan. A solid warm weight was pressing into him from the other side. Suddenly Fenris’s little nest felt claustrophobic. He sat up and pressed the blankets and straw away, in an attempt to re-establish a sense of personal space.

“Aw, look he brought you a present,” Alistair chuckled, pointing to where Augustus had dropped something on Fenris’s lap, before curling up next to him.

Fenris picked it up. It was a half eaten cake, covered in flecks of dog spittle.

“A kind gesture,” Fenris allowed. “But you are the only one who would want this, Augustus.” He lifted it to the dog’s nose and watched as Augustus’s ears perked. He sat up and sniffed it, before devouring the rest out of Fenris’s hand.

“You have a name for him now?” Alistair asked. “It’s kind of a frilly name, isn’t it?”

“It means ‘majestic’.”

“Continuing the fine Ferelden tradition of holding your dog in higher regard than yourself.”

Fenris was not sure what to make of the mockery in Alistair’s voice.

“You are having nightmares though, aren’t you?” Alistair asked.

Fenris was not sure why he was being put on the spot. “I am.”

“Oh, good,” Alistair bit out a sarcastic laugh. “I wasn’t sure. Not much of a screamer are you?”

Fenris waited.

“Okay, that came out wrong,” Alistair suddenly realised. “I only meant that, er- They’re often bad. Bad nightmares. Very bad.” He took a breath and seemed to calm himself. “You see, part of being a Grey Warden is being able to hear the darkspawn. That’s what I would assume your dream was. The archdemon it… ‘talks’ to the horde, and we feel it just as they do. That’s why we know this is really a Blight.”

_Ah, more of the wonders of Grey Wardening._

“It takes a bit, but it will get better,” Alistair reassured. “Eventually you’ll come to block most of the dreams out. And some of the older Grey Wardens say they can understand the archdemon a bit, but I sure can’t.” He licked his lips. “Anyhow, that’s what I, uh, told Sten and Leliana. That you must not have been getting enough sleep with the nightmares and all.”

It would not be satisfactory excuse in the coming days, Fenris knew. But- “You have my thanks.” He felt oddly touched.

“Well, that’s what I’m here for. To deliver unpleasant news and witty one-liners,” Alistair scoffed. “So, er- Nights are getting longer with the season. It’ll be dusk soon. You really planning on…” Alistair wilted at the stare. “Are you going to sleep some more?”

Fenris sighed. “I doubt I will be able to.” He felt wide awake and the prospect of more nightmares was enough to keep him up besides.

“So would you like to-” Alistair offered.

“I should not move,” Fenris cut him off. The pain and stiffness had receded some but- “I am unused to so much walking. By the morning, I should be able to travel at our normal pace, for a few days at least. But for now, I should not move.”

“Don’t then!” Alistair agreed. “You don’t need to move to come sit at the campfire and listen to Leliana sing. Look I’ll even carry you.” And before Fenris could think of a response to that, Alistair chattered on. “You’ve heard of Ser Aveline the Brave?”

“No?” Fenris asked. “Is she very famous?”

“You haven’t heard of her?” Alistair gave a scandalised gasp. “I was going to say nobody’s heard The Tale of Ser Aveline the way Leliana tells it. But I didn’t realise we had a complete Ser Aveline virgin on our hands. That settles it! You have to hear it!” He slapped his hands on his knees and stood up.

He leaned down to scoop Fenris up. But he hesitated, as if he couldn’t figure out if it would be just a little too awkward, and in the meantime Fenris remembered to feel shame.

 _Vishante kaffas!_ He cursed in Tevene and threw a bit of straw in Alistair’s face in the hurry to get up. “I am not an invalid. I can walk myself to the campfire at least,” he said, pushing himself stiffly to his feet. He hoped this capitulation would not lead to Alistair and the others expecting much more of him this evening.

“Of course. Of course,” Alistair said. He raised his hands in surrender, and Fenris tried not to notice he looked a bit flushed. Alistair waited, as Fenris pulled the blanket around himself, got to his feet, and hopped down out of the caravan. And then he huffed a laugh as he trailed after. “I can’t believe they don’t tell the story of Ser Aveline where you’re from.”

 _Why would a slave be told such things?_ Fenris thought to say. But something stopped him. And he realised suddenly that Alistair might not actually realise he was a slave. Perhaps Leliana had not either. None of their party had treated him as a slave. And while Sten almost certainly had inferred as much, the Qunari had different ideas about the worth of people.

Thinking it over, Fenris had never done more than drop the odd comment – had never fully explained the lyrium in his skin, or how he came to fight as he did, or how Duncan came to recruit him. He had never meant to hide it. But things had been busy. There had been other priorities.

It seemed a gross oversight now, but Fenris found himself hesitant to correct it.

Leliana greeted him at the fire pit with a smile, and did not question that he should have leave to know all the things she knew about Aveline and Shartan and Andraste.

Augustus dropped an ugly lamb bone at the edge of Fenris’s blanket. And Alistair picked the bone and threw it into the trees. And he laughed and kept at it even when Augustus returned to deliver the bone back to Fenris – Alistair only the proxy for a game Fenris was too worn to play.

Everyone was considerate in not asking questions Fenris did not want to answer. They let him lay quietly by the fire. It was, for lack of a better word, nice. Comfortable. And far less boring than spending his immobile hours counting time in his head.

It seemed Fenris had inadvertently stumbled upon a good thing.

He did not want to ruin it.


	15. Sulcher’s Pass

They had overshot their route to the east, and had been attempting to right their course when they were attacked by bears going up the pass. The fight itself was uninspiring, but Fenris found that even the mundanities of fleeing and fighting were lighter for the companionship they allowed.

“Let’s see.” Alistair considered the question posed to him. “Before I became a Warden I was training to become a templar. That’s where I learned most of my skills as a fighter.”

Leliana and Sten were behind them on the path, and Augustus scouting in front. And Fenris’s interest was piqued.

“I have heard of the templars.” He had been curious about the templars since he first came south, but had never had an opportunity to speak to any of them personally. “They are the ones that keep your mages in check.”

Alistair batted a couple of branches out of his way up the path. “We are rather famous for that,” he chuckled uncomfortably.

“I would know more about what it entails, if you would tell me,” Fenris urged.

“Oh, you know,” Alistair deflected. “Chantry vows, scouring pots, addiction. You go around collecting mages to put in towers and then watch them all hours of the day. I missed out on most of that though, save for the pots. Duncan took me in before I my formal induction to the order.” Alistair shook his head and laughed at old memories. “Actually, the grand cleric didn’t want to let me go. Duncan was forced to conscript me, and was she ever furious when he did. I thought she was going to have us both arrested.” He sniffled. “I was lucky.”

It was not what Fenris expected to hear. “You did… not want to be a templar then?” he asked.

“Oh, I suppose the Chantry life is good enough for some,” Alistair allowed, tromping up the slope. “But here we have the chance to fight against the Blight, to actually do something good.”

“Is protecting people from the evils of magic not a noble pursuit in of itself?”

“See, that’s the thing…” Alistair hedged. “That’s the part everyone knows about. Evil mages and the valiant heroes that fight and contain them. The Chantry would have you believe the templars exist simply to protect and defend, but don’t let them fool you. Really, we’re the army for their holy wars. And an army rigorously controlled,” he added. “You see, the Chantry gives its templars lyrium to develop their talents, which means we become addicted. And since the Chantry controls the lyrium trade with the dwarves… Well, I’m sure you can put two and two together.”

“You have not hunted many mages then?” Fenris felt disappointed.

“Just the one,” Alistair said. “If you consider shooting fish in a barrel a hunt. They have this ritual they use to test mages, not unlike our Joining really, called a Harrowing. The girl they tested… She had a demon put inside her, to see if she could resist. And she couldn’t. We had to… end her quickly. I have to say I didn’t have much interest in becoming a templar after that… I don’t know what I would have done if Duncan hadn’t…” He grew silent.

Fenris understood. The test was prudent – mages were offered so many temptations, and how many temptations could a man be offered before they gave in? It only made sense to weed out the weakest of them in a controlled setting. It was necessary. But it was an ugly thing to have to witness and be part of.

“Well, it wasn’t all bad,” Alistair reassured. “I enjoyed the training – the discipline. I’m putting the skills I learned as a templar to good use, just sans the vows and the lyrium addiction.”

“These skills…” Fenris began.

“Oh, right, we train in talents that drain mana and disrupt spells,” Alistair clarified. “Duncan thought they might be useful for when we encounter darkspawn emissaries.”

Pieces of this conversation suddenly coalesced in Fenris’s mind. “You said these talents are enhanced by lyrium.”

“That’s what the Chantry says,” Alistair shrugged. “But you can use templar talents without, so I’m not sure if it’s a convenient truth or a convenient lie.”

Fenris held out his arms to display. “I have lyrium.”

Alistair cocked his head curiously. “And you never got around to explaining that…”

Fenris was single minded. “You could teach me these talents.”

Alistair grimaced. “I… really would rather not…”

“Why not?” Fenris demanded. Because the things he could do with that knowledge… Be free of the threat of the hunters. Be free of the threat of Danarius. He remembered suddenly how fearless and irreverent Alistair had been, standing up to the mage at Ostagar. Fenris wanted that for himself.

“When the grand cleric let Duncan recruit me, she made me swear never to repeat templar secrets outside of the Chantry,” Alistair said apologetically. “I’d rather not go back on my word.”

This sunk in, and Fenris could suddenly feel the line drawn in the sand. All the things that others – free men – had the right to, and Fenris never had.

“I see,” Fenris said curtly. “You speak out against the Chantry’s monopoly on lyrium, and the monopoly on the utility of the templar army. But you would horde the Chantry’s information for them – information that every man in Thedas should have access to.”

“Every man in Thedas?” Alistair repeated dumbly. “Why are you in a snit? Whatever I think of the Chantry, the grand cleric did a lot for me. I just don’t want to go back on my word is all.”

“We are fighting a Blight. Knowing those talents could be the difference between life and death.” Fenris insisted. “You don’t think that important?”

Alistair seemed taken aback. “Of- Of course I do. It’s just-” His face pulled into a petulant frown. “I just don’t think you necessarily need templar secrets to defeat the darkspawn.”

Fenris scoffed. He knew a lost battle when he saw one. And he knew, more deeply, that there were things they considered Fenris unfit to know. Fenris clenched his hands and hurried further along the path, trying to lose Alistair in the underbrush.

Alistair called after him. “Wait-! Don’t-! This is not something small you’re asking! Ask me later, perhaps! Maybe I’ll change my mind!”

It infuriated Fenris more, because Alistair was dangling promises in front of his face – promises that would only make Fenris wanton and desperate – only so he might snatch them away again. Fenris would not be made a fool of.

He proceeded up the road, when he was distracted by the sound of his Mabari’s bark. Augustus had sniffed out a traveller and his caravan. When Fenris approached to ask for directions, the man introduced himself by an Orlesian name, Felix de Grosbois.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a bit nervous,” Grosbois said. “I don’t normally take this route. But between all the warring and the Blight in the lowlands, I was hoping for a bit of good luck and good weather in the mountains.” He sighed. “Sadly, I’ve had neither. This trip has been one miserable disaster after another. Bad weather, ripped tarpaulin, and now my mule got spooked and ran off into the woods.”

There was an indecent pause in the conversation.

“Are you… asking me to find your mule?” Fenris said dangerously.

“Oh! No, no, I sent the elf to do that!” Grosbois announced.

He looked at Fenris, who had pointed ears, dark skin, calloused feet, and a lithe build. And whose mood had not improved in the slightest.

“I mean I sent my helper!” Grosbois corrected. “Tarren. Nice fellow, that… Tarren…” He coughed. “Here, I _am_ a merchant, and one with a surplus of luggage. Let me offer you something as an apology.”

Tarren eventually returned with the mule, and master and servant repaired their cart and continued along the road. Fenris was left with a control rod for a golem. A golem allegedly located in a village several days south in a town called Honnleath.

“If that elf had any sense he would have taken the mule and fled,” Fenris spat at their footprints.

Sten and Leliana were the ones at his side now. Alistair lingered off to the side, sulking. Augustus was sniffing the perimeter of the clearing.

Sten stood at his shoulder and replied in Qunlat. “ _And where would the elf run to? And with what supplies? No, there are better times to run._ ”

“ _You don’t think I know that?!_ ” Fenris snarled. No, it had not been pleasant fleeing in the jungles of Seheron without food or water or anything to his name. “ _It is better to run at a poor time than not at all._ ”

“ _So it would seem,_ ” Sten agreed.

“This Felix de Grosbois did seem rather unscrupulous.” Leliana frowned. “Perhaps this is what happens, so far in these backwoods and removed from the watchful eyes of society. In Orlais, most elvhen servants live in the homes of their masters, often in great wealth and luxury.”

Sten took the opportunity to respond to her. But Fenris groaned.

He had known that. Silk sheets, walls lined with dwarven runes to keep the rooms a pleasant temperature, kitchen slaves to serve him food and drink and sedatives at all hours. A jewelled collar. Luxuries to make every pain and cruelty easier to bear, whether inflicted or endured.

“They are well compensated for their services,” Leliana was saying. “A well-trained elvhen servant is highly valued in Orlais. They are nimble and dextrous and many people find them pleasing to look at.”

Whatever response Sten would have had, Fenris never got the chance to hear it.

“Like a prize-winning animal?!” he snapped, thinking of the glory of the podium at the colosseo. “Like a pet _wolf_?!”

Leliana seemed frazzled. “No, I did not mean it that way!”

“It does not matter how you think you meant it,” Fenris snarled. “That is what being an elvhen ‘servant’ _means_!”

“I–” Leliana hesitated.

Fenris could not tell if Leliana’s doubt was meant for him or for herself, but he did not stick around to find out. He stormed off to consider the golem rod alone.

Leliana let him go.

But Sten followed. He watched as Fenris turned the stone rod in his hand, and failed to glean meaning from the runes across its side.

After a moment Sten spoke. “ _You are not as unflappable as you like to appear. Nor as_ _subtle with your secrets._ _If you do not plan to explain yourself to them, then you_ _should be more calm, so as not to invite insubordination._ ”

“ _You are being insubordinate right now,_ ” Fenris grumbled.

“ _Am I?_ ” Sten asked.

Fenris got the distinct impression he was being mocked.

They were quiet a long moment, and then Sten spoke again. “ _What do you plan to do about the rod, Fenris of the Grey Wardens?_ ”

“ _That man isn’t to be trusted,_ ” Fenris nodded towards the path where Grosbois left.

“ _No,_ ” Sten agreed.

“ _But he is gone,_ ” Fenris shrugged. “ _And whether he is to be trusted means less now than if he had stayed._ ”

“ _Indeed._ ”

“ _What would you suggest?_ ” Fenris asked.

“ _It is likely a waste of time,_ ” Sten said. “ _And if it is not, you may gain a powerful resource._ ”

Fenris considered the non-answer. “ _Either way, there will be darkspawn to fight,_ ” he reasoned. He flipped the rod in his hand and, in the end, curiosity won out. “ _If we are going to go, we should go now. It is unlikely we will return this far south again._ ”


	16. Honnleath

It turned out Fenris was just about the only person interested in visiting Honnleath instead of getting as far away from the place as possible. They’d run into three separate groups fleeing from the town already.

“I just can’t thank you enough for helping out my boy and myself,” the dwarf said, as he spread a poultice over the boy’s skinned shin. “Say thank you, Sandal.”

“Thank you,” Sandal repeated stupidly, before wincing and trying to pull his leg away. To no avail - Fenris held it firmly in place. “I don‘t like it,” he whined uncomfortably.

“I know, my boy,” Bodahn agreed sadly, as he wrapped the bandage tightly over the herbs. “I know.” He turned back to Fenris. “I thought this little town would be a good stop for business, but I can see now I was wrong. Might I ask what brings you out here? If you won‘t be staying too long, perhaps we can depart together. Road‘s been mighty dangerous these days between the bandits and the darkspawn.”

“We are only here for as long as it takes to clear out the darkspawn and retrieve a shipment,” Fenris said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Ah, good, good,” Bodahn chirped agreeably. “Enough time for us to pile everything back in the caravan and hitch the oxen back to their yoke. Though I must say your friends have done a great deal to calm them already.” He nodded to where Augustus had herded the beasts, and Leliana and Sten were talking them down. “If there’s anything me or my boy can do for you, you just say the word.”

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Alistair asked, as they continued up the incline to the village gates. “Might get them into more trouble than we’re worth – associating with us ‘enemies of the crown’.”

Fenris was not sure himself. “I’ve been told I’m very scandalous company to keep – violent, salacious, corrupt.”

“Oh, ho!” Alistair snorted. “A jokester! Does this mean you’re talking to me again?”

“I do not believe I was ever not talking to you,” Fenris said. “So far as I can tell you decided to spend the entire trip here in deep meditation.”

“Hey, however you’d like to spin it.” Alistair pointed up at the gibbets littering the path up town. “Looks like the villagers really know how to throw out the welcome mat.”

Fenris frowned at the faces of the hanging corpses, staring down at them with lonely eyes. “They match well with the darkspawn corpses we left on the way up.”

“Can’t be too mad about matching décor,” Alistair agreed.

The central square in Honnleath was overrun entirely with darkspawn. And although Fenris was itching to add further to the décor, and test out the improved broadsword that Bodahn had gifted him, this group of darkspawn included a number of archers who had forced them under cover behind a ransacked building.

“I can sneak around behind them,” Leliana volunteered. “I will cause a distraction, and then you three- excuse me-” she corrected when Augustus gave an indignant bark. “You _four_ will use that opportunity to rush upon them from behind.”

“You plan to do this in broad daylight?” Fenris asked sceptically.

Leliana gave an amused huff, before checking the way and dashing out the other side of the building.

“Didn’t realise they taught sneaky-sneaky swooping in the Chantry,” Alistair said. “Guess I signed up for the wrong course.”

The plan, and the blade, both worked better than Fenris had hoped. And when the darkspawn were finally dispatched, the party was able to take in the rest of the village for what it was. A quiet little place over the grassy knolls in the foothills of the Frostbacks. There didn’t appear to be any survivors, but for the ones that fled on their way into the village. Leliana unlocked a chest at the foot of the largest house, and found it full of brightly coloured banners and embroidered skirts and paper garlands.

“The cache for the Harvest Festival,” Alistair noted. “Might end up dancing the Remigold after all.”

They headed across the town and up its next hill to find a fenced plot of land. There, it seemed, was the golem.

“It must be,” Leliana said. “An actual golem, and not a statue at all. I wonder how it ended up here, of all places?”

Fenris searched his bag for the control rod and held it up. “ _Dulef gar_.”

Nothing happened.

He repeated himself louder, once more. And then thrust it over at Alistair. “You try. It’s not working for me.”

“I don’t see how it’s going to make much difference if I say it,” Alistair pouted. But he held up the rod and repeated the activation phrase anyway.

Nothing.

Fenris considered. They were in an empty town in the middle of nowhere, without any recourse to budge the golem. “It seems this entire exercise was a complete waste of time after all.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Leliana said.

The others looked to her curiously.

“You have to think there’s a story here. And we are just beginning to uncover it.” She waved her hand expressively and led them through the square. “You see, it is a peaceful day in the village of Honneleth. Or perhaps the day of the festival. Families cheering and singing and preparing all sorts of pies and delicacies. When suddenly,” she paused dramatically, “darkspawn charge in.”

“We found the festival wear in a locked chest-” Fenris began to say.

Sten shushed him.

This made Fenris so indignant he missed the next few lines of Leliana’s story.

“Spilled blood, singed ground, baskets of birdseed flying every which way,” she traced signs along the ground. “A few of the villagers flee down the slope into the Lowlands, but the rest of them decide to gather and go-”

Augustus barked. He’d dashed ten paces ahead of them at the entrance to a building.

“I was just getting to that,” Leliana scoffed, following the rest of the footprints up to where the Mabari wagged his tail, pleased as punch. “You are so impatient,” she scolded.

Augustus barked and romped in a self-congratulatory circle.

Leliana pulled open the door, which Fenris now saw was ajar and ripped off one of its hinges. “Well, are you all coming?” she asked, before disappearing inside the cellar. Augustus followed in after her.

“Sneaky swooping, lock-picking, and tracking,” Alistair tisked. “You know, it might just be me, but I’m beginning to think it’s not that I signed up for the wrong course, but that Leliana didn’t _really_ learn to do all this stuff sitting in Lothering’s Chantry after all.”

“Evidently not,” Fenris said.

Sten snorted derisively. “Your powers of insight could use work. I suppose both of you have yet to realise she is also a woman.”

“Umm…” Alistair’s eyebrows crinkled. “No, actually, I’m pretty sure that’s one of the first things we realised about her?”

“I advise against discussing gender roles with the Qunari,” Fenris said. It was often a topic of linguistic and cultural misunderstanding between Qunlat and Tevene. He pressed them forward into the cellar.

Inside they found more darkspawn, but also a home brewery. Alistair poured each of them a quarter of a tankard. Leliana took one sip and went red in the cheeks. Sten’s expression was impossible to read.

Fenris swirled the ale in the cup, and watched it glow a faint chartreuse.

“It’s pretty good,” Alistair said. “Don’t think I’ve had anything like it before.”

Neither had Fenris. And it wasn’t anything he’d coveted before, not like the wine he’d poured for Danarius’s guests.

He took a sip. And then a long gulp that drained the rest of the tankard.


	17. Wilhelm's Cellar

“Take a look at this.”

While Leliana rustled through shelves and drawers and Sten stood guard at the door leading deeper into the caves beneath the cellar, Alistair had gone for the journal laid plainly over Wilhelm’s desk. He handed it over to Fenris, open to a page he’d flipped a few sheets back to.

Fenris accepted it.

Yes it was full of… letters… letters and words… He glared at them a little, like if he looked for long enough they might rearrange themselves into something he could understand. But in the end he did what he always knew he was going to do. He let his eyes scan left to right across the page and, after a seemingly appropriate amount of time passed, he turned the page and repeated the process until he’d looked over the small selection Alistiar seemed to deem important.

Fenris closed the journal.

“Well?” Alistair prompted. “What do you think?”

Fenris scraped his finger along the edge of the paper and made an educated guess. “I think we knew that this cellar was not built with all these protections and fail safes for no reason.”

Alistair huffed a joyless laugh. “Well, I may have hoped he was just hiding his secret stash of women’s lingerie. Or a vault of aged cheese.”

“A dragon’s horde of treasure,” Fenris offered. “A hidden path to the Golden City.”

“Now you’re getting it. If only we were that lucky,” Alistair sighed. “So, do you think he managed to get rid of the demon?”

_Ah, of course. First came the mage, and now demons were following right on his heels._

Fenris was not sure how the mage, Matthias, had talked them into rooting around in the caves under the cellar for a command phrase they should already have. But he seemed well enough intentioned, if stinking a little of nepotism. Son of a war hero – that could get you far anywhere. But Fenris couldn’t deny that the mage had acted to save the other villagers from the darkspawn, even if he’d effectively trapped them in this cellar without food or water on the uncertain promise of help arriving.

“We shall see,” Fenris offered.

Alistair nodded. “Yeah, I guess that really is all there is to it.”

Fenris wondered afterwards if that really was all there was to it. If he might have been more prepared had he actually been able to read the contents of that journal. If he asked more questions and had been a little less proud.

There were rickety wooden ramps down further into the earth that creaked as they walked over, one at a time, so as not to burden them with too much weight. The roots of a tree poked through the ceiling and hung down over the empty pit. Fenris felt prepared when the demons attacked them along this path. They twisted up from out the Fade, and went back easily enough.

He felt less prepared when he heard the girl’s voice.

“What do you mean you’ve never climbed a tree? Don’t cats like to be in trees?”

She was not talking to nothing. A voice that Fenris could not quite make out answered in a coaxing whisper.

The girl looked up when they descended the ramp. “Oh, are you-” She seemed to falter a little at the collection of adults that made their way down the ramp, but soldiered on bravely. “Kitty and I were just about to play a guessing game. But it would be better with more people.”

The cat’s eyes glowed purple. Fenris did not think it was simply the grim lighting in the cave.

“Get away from her,” Fenris told the demon.

The girl was the one who answered. She pouted furiously. “Well, if you’re not going to play, you should leave. Kitty and I will just have fun on our own.”

“Your father waits for you.” He was not sure how to convey the urgency of the situation, and it frustrated him. “Go!”

“Nothing you say will convince Amalia to go with you. I am her friend, while you are just a stranger.” The demon cat tilted its head. “Did you even know her name, before I said it?”

“I won’t go with you!” Amalia said. “If I do, Kitty will be left behind! She’ll be lonely!”

Augustus growled at the cat and gnashed his teeth.

The demon cat seemed to take special offense to this. “I would not suggest leaving in such hostile company anyhow, Amalia. Look at how they act.” She stretched her back, exactly the way a cat would. “It seems we are at an impasse-”

Fenris lunged across the room before the demon could get out another word. It didn’t matter if the girl wanted to come with him or not. She shrieked as he wrapped his gauntlet around her arm and dragged her towards the entrance of the chamber, where he thought to hide her behind the others as they routed the demon.

He never got there. The girl started to shine the same purple as the cat’s eyes. His eyes widened as she grew larger, fuller. Fenris yelped, and dropped her arm as if it burned.

The demon leaned over him, suspended in the air where Amalia had been a moment before. “I don’t think so,” she whispered. “Send me back to oblivion. But know she’s mine. Forever.”

More spirits leapt from the ground, consuming the corpse of the cat. Crawling for the rest of them.

Fenris reeled back and thrust his gauntlet through the demon’s stomach.

She didn’t start to look like a girl again until he finished burrowing out the other side of her – a corpse impaled on his arm.


	18. Outside Honnleath

“You cannot beat up on yourself like this.”

Fenris glanced up at Leliana from where he was wrapped up by the fire. He attempted not to scowl, and was not entirely sure he was successful.

“Everyone in hiding in that basement would have died, if you had not come here today,” she reminded. “It is very sad about Amalia, but you did what you could do. And you’ll have to do worse, before this Blight is over. You must steel yourself.”

Fenris was sure the scowl on his face was plain at this point.

Leliana sighed. “Get some rest. It’s a long road to Redcliffe tomorrow.” She pressed herself up from where she’d bent down to him, and walked away.

What did Leliana think she was going to tell him that he didn’t already know? That the girl would have died in that basement with or without him? That it was foolish to grieve for what was likely a mage, and one who found herself that easily possessed? That he shouldn’t sulk, like the victim, when he was the perpetrator tens of hundreds of times over, when it wasn’t him that died impaled on some monster’s arm?

What had the purpose of running from Danarius been, if he had to suffer the same pains and commit the same crimes everywhere he went?

A new figure approached and stood over him, waiting patiently, blocking the warmth of the firelight. Fenris took a deep breath, and glared up at the interloper. Was it _that_ difficult to understand that he wished to be alone?

The golem looked down at him. “I have heard it is called the Grey Warden.”

“Do _not_ ,” Fenris snarled, “call me _it_.”

“No?” the golem seemed unperturbed. “It is what my former master called me. That and ‘golem’.”

“No,” Fenris commanded.

“I believe I have a better nickname anyhow,” the golem went on to say. “I have noticed the Grey Warden is covered in gemstones, not unlike myself. The Gemstone Elf? Glittering Elf? Glowing Elf?”

Fenris had watched Leliana arrange patches of precious stone along the golem’s shoulders, and watched the golem swell with pride.

The bile in his stomach rose. “Gems? This is lyrium,” Fenris spat. “Lyrium – carved into my flesh against my will! In a ritual I remember only for the agony it caused me!” It was not mere _decoration_. They meant pain, and poison, and death for everyone around him.

“Agony?” the golem repeated. “Is it the same as pain? Where one squeaks loudly and squirts blood? I have no reason to know anything about it. And yet these concepts seem familiar to me – a ritual, agony…” The golem seemed to contemplate. “The Glittering Elf is very intriguing,” it decided. “You may call me Shale, by the way.”

Fenris grunted moodily.

“I think we’re going to get along famously,” Shale announced, before walking off to the other end of camp.

Fenris did not think a golem would be capable of swaggering, but Shale seemed to, just to spite him.

It did not feel as cathartic as Fenris thought it might – to shout his history and his pains to Shale in that way. What had he expected, if not the Shale’s disaffected curiosity? Revulsion? Anger? Pity? All sounded unappealing. All the more reason to tell no one else about it.

There was no moon in the sky tonight. Alistair and Leliana were already in their tents. The dwarves from Honnleath, Bodahn and Sandal, were in their caravan. Fenris doused the fire, and curled into his bedroll.

He was not sure if he slept and dreamt, or merely remembered vividly. He had been at a party with Danarius. There had been the slave boy. Danarius meant to put on a show to impress his fellow senators – fireworks and glimpses of the Fade. To fuel it, Danarius had killed the boy.

Fenris had killed the boy. He gagged the boy and drugged him, and delivered him to Danarius’s side with strips already cut across his abdomen, so the blood was easy to call upon. Fenris didn’t remember the boy’s face, but he remembered the abdomen, rising and falling with pained intakes of breath until-

There was the rip of fabric. A shriek that sounded as if it came from Leliana. Fenris sat up in his bedroll as the camp was covered in magelight.

“That’s not the elf! Who is that?” one of the slave hunters said, standing over the tent they had ripped the top off of.

At the same time, a second one pointed. “There he is!”

A third simply grabbed the edge of Fenris’s bedroll, and one of Fenris’s ankles with it, and heaved him up.

Fenris flailed for a moment, before gathering the wherewithal to phase through whatever the hunter was attempting to tie to his leg. He fell hard on the ground and the pile of bedding, and didn’t wait before launching himself at his attacker.

He didn’t have his sword, or even his gauntlets. And he’d been stupid. So stupid. Emotional and foolish and why had he let the others convince him to stash his weapons for the night. He wrestled with the hunter until he had successfully pinned the man down, straddling his chest and holding him by the neck, and then he reached one of his hands up through the man’s skull and scrambled his brains the best he could.

The man had probably made a mess of his clothes, and Fenris’s strewn bedroll. There wasn’t much time to contemplate. Fenris hurried to his feet. There were more hunters around the clearing, although most engaged with the rest of his companions. But the ones he had to worry about were-

He swung frantically around, but not quick enough to find his assailant before all the blood in his body ran hot and constricted and froze him in place.

“Feisty,” the mage said, as he adjusted the fur-lined sleeve of his Tevinter Robe. “You really did a number on poor Dominic.”

Fenris couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. He was not even sure if his pupils widened, before the image of the man swam out of focus.

“Don’t worry, little slave. Your master’s only paying if we capture you alive.”

There was a feral howl and a few ugly yelps, and Fenris’s chest heaved as he suddenly regained control over himself.

His vision only snapped back into focus, as the mage threw a lightning spell, and Augustus let out a pained yip and let go of where he’d bitten through the mage’s leg.

But it was enough. He pounced on the man, twisted his bleeding arm until it began to crack.

The mage mouthed something, but Fenris didn’t give him time to gather whatever spell he was going to cast before plunging his hand through the man’s throat.

The magelight went out, which was probably a good sign as any insofar as the mortality of the hunter he was strewn atop. Fenris stood and turned in the darkness. Unlike a human, he could still see well enough through it.

Sten had killed two hunters, it seemed, and was handling a third. Leliana was nowhere Fenris could easily see, but she had that talent for sneaking away to higher ground. That just left Alistair, who was in his pyjamas and fumbling a sword that didn’t look like his in the dark, against a female hunter who appeared to see no better than him.

Augustus barked, having recovered some from the lightning shock, and charged. And Fenris, after pilfering the dagger from the mage’s belt, followed.

Alistair had fallen to the ground, but Augustus was working hard on his assailant’s leg, and it was an easy thing for Fenris to slip behind her on light feet and drive the dagger through her back.

All the struggling in the camp seemed to stop all at once.

Alistair blinked up at him. “Fenris?” he asked, squinting. Clearly not as capable of seeing Fenris as Fenris was seeing him. “It had better be you. Unless it’s another Warden trying to kill us.”

“No, it is-” Fenris felt suddenly conscious. “I am myself.”

“Oh, good,” Alistair said, although really he sounded winded and irritable. “Now what in blighted hell was that?”


	19. The Place Where the Hunters Attacked

“Is that so, Messer Fenris? Because, you see, I was just telling myself they would have been the strangest group of bandits I’d ever had the misfortune to run across – skipped over our goods and our wallets entirely.”

Bodahn did not wait for his response, turning away to tend to the fire and offer Sandal reassurances. Fenris sat, with his legs dangling off the edge of Bodahn’s caravan and gripped the tin cup of soup Bodahn had given him. The soup was an ugly brown colour and had stratified into two layers – watery broth atop thick pea sludge – but Fenris was terrified to find he was beginning to grow accustomed to the slop Fereldens called food. It was a spot of warm in the cold twilight and, despite the bland taste, he took sips of it with increasing frequency.

Fenris watched Bodahn a moment, and then turned his attention to Sandal, who staring at him with wide eyes and a blank expression. Their eyes locked for a long moment and just as Fenris was beginning to wonder if Sandal understood, or if something like communication had passed between them, Sandal spoke.

“Enchantment?”

“Not now.” Fenris supposed attempting to read sense into a simpleton did not speak well to his own mental fitness.

Well, there was really only one person’s reaction he cared about.

Fenris tilted his head sideways to where Alistair sat next to him on the blanket, legs dangling off the open back of the caravan.

Alistair noticed him watching, and snapped briefly from his reverie. “Sorry, I’m not ignoring you or anything,” he said. “I’m just thinking it over.”

“Take your time,” Fenris snipped. He was feeling very impatient.

“Thanks.” Alistair was apparently unaware of the sarcasm.

“Fortifications should be built around camp from now on,” Sten interrupted, as he approached the caravan. Fenris did not realise at first that he’d spoken in the trade tongue but registered the switch to Qunlat as he turned to Fenris. “ _You told them where you came from?_ ”

“ _Yes,_ ” Fenris said.

“ _Good. Perhaps now we will spend less time delayed by your foolishness,_ ” Sten said.

“ _Forgive me for not wishing to share every sordid detail of my past with everyone we run across,_ ” Fenris snapped.

“ _Your allies are just anyone?_ ” Sten raised a critical eyebrow. “ _Under the Qun, the facets of the individual are known, evaluated, and they are placed where their strengths can be nurtured and their weaknesses covered. I am not a Tammasran who would evaluate you, but I know enough to say this: a soldier that hides a limp leaves his allies’ backs uncovered when he falls earlier than expected. The platoon, the Antaam, the Qun is strong because of its unity._ ”

“ _So strong, it can’t win a war against a crumbling empire ruled by megalomanic despots!_ ”

“ _We shall see._ ” Clearly unimpressed with Fenris’s petulance, Sten turned to address them both in the common tongue. “Leliana is nearly done scouting the camp. There do not appear to be more of them. Although she found something concerning. There was a beast.”

“A beast?” Alistair repeated, once again alert from his reverie.

“One of them not unlike the large spotted cats,” Sten said. “Only not a cat. It is large and brown and fat. I believed I saw it during the attack, and then it disappeared. It left tracks, but not enough.”

“I’ll come take a look.” Alistair slid off the back of the caravan. “Someone had better check and see if Shale’s all done pretending to be a boulder. And Leliana. Er-” Alistair turned to Fenris apologetically. “Do you mind if I tell, Leliana? She’s bound to, um-”

“Answer her questions,” Fenris agreed. It was only a few sentences, but he did not want to have to say it again. He did not want to deal with the immediacy of Leliana’s judgements and ignorance and pity either.

“Thanks,” Alistair said, before trotting off.

Fenris was left presiding over the pair of dwarves at the campfire.

“Enchantment?” Sandal asked.

Fenris tilted his cup and let the last of the pea sludge run into his mouth, before sliding off the back of the caravan and leaning forward to hand the empty vessel to Sandal.

“Enchantment!” Sandal agreed, and immediately began tracing runes shapes onto the thin sheet of tin that made the body of the cup.

“Well, it’s looking to be a fine morning, isn’t it?” Bodahn said, with a measured smile.

It wasn’t even dawn yet and Fenris was already exhausted.

The conversation died and the fire was beginning to dwindle.

Alistair jogged back to the caravan with something almost approaching determination.

“Alright, well, it certainly looked like bear tracks but- Bigger problems.” He waved his arms, as if chasing away all other concerns. “Let me see if I have this straight: You used to be a slave in Tevinter?”

“Yes,” Fenris said.

“And your former master, he branded a fortune of lyrium into your skin, and he’s hunting you across all of Thedas so he can cut it back out of you?”

“Yes,” Fenris said.

“And when Duncan recruited you, he promised that the Grey Wardens would shelter you from slave hunters? Only… Now there are no Grey Wardens except for us…?”

Fenris nodded.

Alistair bit his lip and nodded back appraisingly. Once, twice, thrice, like he understood something. “That’s why you were so eager to learn Templar skills.” His voice was grim as he made the deductions. “You wanted me to teach you, so you’d have a way to fight the slave hunters. And to fight your former master.”

Fenris wasn’t going to answer that. He frowned down at his feet, and felt something sink into the pit of his stomach. Like he’d been selfish. Like he was ashamed.

“Alright,” Alistair clapped his hands together. “I’ll teach you.”

“I thought you ‘made a promise to the Grand Cleric’!” Fenris snarled, before he could remember not to look a gift horse in the mouth and not to sabotage himself and not to drive away the only allies he had.

And in the end it didn’t matter.

“I did,” Alistair acknowledged. “But you’re more important.”

No hesitation. No equivocation.

Fenris scowled down at his feet and swallowed around the frog in his throat and he couldn’t say a single word in response. Because if he did he was sure his voice would crack and he’d burst immediately into tears.

“It’s going to take some time to learn though,” Alistair said apologetically. “Maybe… Maybe Redcliffe isn’t the best place to go right away after all. It’s not exactly the easiest place to get lost in.”

“I have an idea, if you don’t mind me cutting in, messers?” Bodahn said.

Fenris did mind a little, but he could hardly say so.

“Not at all, go ahead,” Alistair prompted.

“They say the dwarven king has passed on, and the entrance to the underground shut tight until the Assembly manages the succession crisis,” Bodahn informed. “If you’re still insisting on visiting Orzammar, and still insisting you have a legal way into the city, it might be a good place to hide from these hunters. They’d have a mighty hard time following in after you, I’d imagine.”

“That’s an idea! Isn’t it?” Alistair asked.

Fenris snorted. In Tevinter, dwarves were known for being in good with the Magisters. They had multiple underground enclaves in the larger cities of Minrathous and Quarinus, and the Imperial Circle managed extensive trade agreements with Kal Sharok. A pessimistic part of Fenris wanted to say that Danarius could probably pay off anyone that needed paying off to get the slave hunters into the city, if he chose to.

But there was another part of Fenris, a larger part, that was beginning to thrum with warmth and curiosity and something Fenris would have tentatively called optimism. So when he composed himself enough to speak this was what he said:

“I have always wanted to see the dwarven kingdoms.”


End file.
